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

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.

Sorry ledge, I prolly should know this, but what would you recommend for a science fiction read? I'm up for something, and if there's some mindbogglingly vast and inhuman distances or timescales to be had, well then, I'm there.

Shame you didn't enjoy Gateway, ledge. It is easily in my top 5, maybe top 3 SF novels. I saw it as an antidote to stuff like Rendezvous with Rama where the dull protagonists who are essentially analogues for the author spend an entire novel masturbating furiously over some supposed "wonder of the universe" and it isn't clear why you should care. In contrast, imo Pohl gives equal weight to the characters and the macguffin, has an interesting twist on the genre (i.e. a hard sf novel where no one in the story actually understands the science and in fact aren't really interested in the science just the loot), and the whole thing is superbly well-paced, plotted, etc. Oh and I like how the little notes and "documents" scattered throughout the novel are a nice way of getting round some of the problems of infodumps. I would agree with you that the "robo-shrink" stuff feels kind of dated these days, but I think it is worth it in terms of pacing of the narrative and as a means of exploring Robinette's character.

I really liked Rama - obviously I'm a robot who care more about things than about people :)

xp to Gamaliel, Alastair Reynolds is my go-to guy for all that: The Revelation Space series (the planetbound Chasm City excepted); Pushing Ice is a good standalone place to start; and the Zima Blue collection has Beyond the Aquila Rift which is an obvious riff on Gateway, and despite its short length, absolutely breathtaking in scope. It also has a couple of his Merlin stories which are great Banks-style new space opera turned up to 11.

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson pushes the 'vast and inhuman distances and timescales' thing to the point of parody, but it's a heck of a ride.

Am always after more recommendations meself, I got The New Space Opera anthology, which was fun enough but didn't really point me in the way of anything new, except Robert Reed, maybe, might give this a go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrow_(novel)

I really liked Rama - obviously I'm a robot who care more about things than about people :)

lol - I really enjoyed Rama as well. I was exaggerating a bit to make my point and Rama was the first hard sf novel with a comparable central macguffin that came to mind. Sorry Arthur!

I can see we are going to disagree a lot though - I think Alastair Reynolds is a total hack lol. Admittedly though I did enjoy both "Zima Blue" and "Beyond the Aquila Rift" (yes, with the latter it was totally because it put me in mind of Gateway), so I think I might have to give him another go.

Tau Zero has been on my list for a while.

Iain M Banks is my go to guy for 'vast and inhuman distances and timescales' but I'm guessing everyone on this thread is pretty familiar with that stuff already.

I recently read Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep, which I didn't love personally, but might tick some of these boxes.

I think you would like Tau Zero, it's hard science and people centred - again in the somewhat quaint pop psychology way so beloved of 60s/70s SF authors.

I have a colossal Fire Upon the Deep/Deepness in the Sky two-in-one volume sitting on my shelves, a huge tome, brooding at me, throwing off waves of discouragement. Fear Me! It seems to toll. I Will Be A Massive Slog!

btw two nitpicks about Gateway - first of all he says 15% of Gateway flights don't come back, then later on they see a ticker saying 2355 launches, 841 returns. So that's more like a 70% failure rate, we've gone from russian roulette to a worse than evens chance of survival.

Then SPOILER the ending SPOILER: presumably for the escape to work one ship has to be pointing into the black hole, and one pointing away? How does it work that everyone crowds into the doomed ship and he gets 'trapped' in the one which survives?

To answer the first point I would guess it is that 2355 launches is all the launches that have been made; 841 returns is the number who have come back; but then there are going to be a % who have launched and not yet come back, but that doesn't mean that they aren't going to come back at some point - they may only just have been launched after all. Don't ask me how they then calculate the 15% thing - presumably there is a cutoff point where they write-off crews.

I would have to read the ending again to answer the second question - I'm guessing that perhaps the orientation of the landers had shifted as they were hustling to get everything across. I remember there is some ambiguity as to whether Robinette pushed the launch button on his lander or the others did or they both did it at the same and maybe the unspecified order of how things happened would have changed the outcome. Or it might have something to do with the properties of black holes in such close proximity. I confess though this isn't the kind of thing I tend to notice as a reader.

Cheers ledge. I must admit I've always been a bit scared of Al Reynolds' stuff. Have been meaning to read some for years (he was on a forum I was on back in the late '90s), but the hard tech plus length is a bit intimidating. Shall give it a go tho. Maybe some summer reading.

just picked up Jack Williamson's "The Legion of Space" from a car boot, looks pretty old and funky. anyone read it?

also Arther C Clarke, "Earthlight". Although not too keen on Clarkes stuff, for 25 pence i couldn't resist.

did you ever get that copy of novels in three lines?

i never did. canada's postal service seems to not work

oh well. email me yr new address, i'll send you the adrian .. tthingmy book

Glad I stuck with Perdido Street Station, there were probably too many ideas jostling around in there but I've never quite read anything like it (maybe because I gave up on Gormenghast after 20 pages).

Other recent reads :
M. John Harrison - The Centauri Device
Barrington J. Bayley - The Grand Wheel

Both crazy existential pulp sf, hampered only slightly by terrible writing. Not that bad writing is usually a problem for me in this genre, but Bayley pushes it a bit sometimes.
Next up is Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside, will it be worth my while?

I know Harrison has pretty much disowned Centauri Device, and complains online whenever it gets reprinted

Dying Inside is fucking awesome. The ultimate Jewish-male-with-fading-potency novel (see P. Roth, S. bellow, etc), but with telepathy as the power, rather than erections.

Anyone read Harrison's Light?

Yes Light is awesome - been a while since I read it though so can't be more specific. Really great writer, who I wish I had read more of - get's a little bit forgotten I think.

I enjoyed Centauri Device myself, but if you didn't don't let it put you off as I think he matured into one of the best prose stylists SF has to offer.

Dying Inside - I enjoyed this as well but I read it like 6 years ago. I remember thinking that some of the drug stuff in it felt dated, perhaps inevitably, and I think it had a bit of that of-its-time psychoanalytical type stuff that ledge complained about in Gateway. That was just my lingering impression and I might be way off beam though.

Silverberg is an interesting writer because he was one of these guys who started out as the pulpiest of pulp writers in the 40s/50s, but then found a new lease of life when New Wave came along.

And then sadly, in the late 1980s and onwards, he became a writer of professional, competent and ultra-dull stuff. But his 60s/0s stuff is full of gems.

Anyone read Harrison's Light?

I didn't like it. Found it cartoonish and dishonest.

i disliked 'nova swing', which was connected in some way; never saw 'light' cheap enough to take a shot at it

not sure i'd want to rep for anything bar the viriconium books: which i need to reread rather badly, i fear.

tad williams is pissing me off.

Anyone read Harrison's Light?

yeah but i like his science-fantasy sword and sorcery stuff a lot better. the pastel city rules

Finished Gateway. Three out of five at best.

I must disagree... reading it recently I thought it heading for being the best thing ever. I liked a lot of the things you did not like - the convincing and fully realised characters for one thing, and the confusing and mysterious nature of the alien technology for another.

In other Dirty Vicar disagreement news, I disagree with everyone who dislikes the design of the Gollancz SF Masterworks books.

Did anyone else read The Wind-Up Girl w/in the last few years? It turned up on our shelves recently and it was...really different, different dystopian/climate-fucked future vision with specific speculative conditions & details that I don't recall anyone else ever tackling. Verrrrrry interesting.

(spam)

8)

(i've just wishlisted it. thanks)

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.