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

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)

The Wind-Up Girl - yes I read this about 2 months ago. Very, very good debut. Imaginative, great world, convincing speculation, non-cliched take on a potentially overdone subject (climate change). I think what led it down slightly was that some of the central characters were more interesting and fully developed than others (e.g. the US Calorie Man was incredibly underwritten and seemed to act as a cypher to allow the author to explore the setting more than anything) and the plot was a bit meh.

But yeah very excited to see where Bacigalupi goes next.

Agreed, the plotting was off, and certain strands didn't get picked up fully or were written out too quickly when they had to be sacrificed to bring things to a close. I'd say there's room for a sequel except I don't know if Bacigalupi would even be interested, or if he wants to go in a whole new direction.

If you are interested in the world, there are a couple of short stories that pre-dated the novel in the same setting, although I've only read one "The Calorie Man". I think one is about Hock Seng's backstory (he was best character imo).

He released another novel Ship Breaker but it is a YA thing so I think I'll give it a miss and from wiki it looks like there is another novel slated for this year The Alchemist (with J.K. Drummond - who s/he?).

OH MY GOD I'M AN IDIOT SHIP BREAKER IS ONE OF MINE

And it is glorious.

Ok maybe I will check it out then...

Not "mine" rly but "ours". I try to be oblique about that stuff on teh innernets so I can pan a book if I want to w/o being traceable.

I've just started "Foundation and Empire" for SF book club. It seems a bit more thrill powered than Foundation itself, which is nice.

That series just gets worse and worse.

mmm, I had heard otherwise, at least with regards to F&E and 2F.

A bit into F&E, though, I would have to say that it still has the problem that the Foundation people are all really smarmy. I always find myself rooting for the people they defeat.

Sorry that was a bit dismissive, but I just couldn't get on with it. I only read the first three, not all the sequels, prequels, etc. I hated the concept of psychohistory. I hated that Seldon's plan was basically unquestioned and there seemed to be no moral dimension. I hated the idea of elite cadres of technocrats as the only hope for the galaxy etc etc. It just hasn't dated well on the whole.

I read the original trilogy and a couple of the sequels and the prequel when I was younger. I re-read the original series again last year and thought it was mediocre - not well written and pretty dry. From what I remember the prequel is more fun to read but a bit dumb and the sequels just try and shoehorn the Foundation and Robot universes together.

Guardian Review is an SF special today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/guardianreview <- main page link will probably change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/13/iain-banks-science-fiction-genre
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-interviews

and this is to tie in with the upcoming British Library Science Fiction exhibition, Out Of This World, which opens on the 20th until Sept

a few details here
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/outofthisworld/outofthisworld.html

That's added a few to my to-read list. The current list in full:

City by Simak
Light by Harrison ... or maybe not, the blurb did a good job of putting me off.
The Stars My Destination by Bester
The City and The Stars by Clarke
Solaris by Lem
Redemption Ark by Reynolds
... and something by Octavia Butler.

Am curious as to exactly what non-SF SF books Banks thinks he's referring to in his somewhat absurd and condescending piece.

Light has got three storylines, ledge, they alternate chapters, so if you don't like one you might like the other two.

(i have the Bester if you'd like a lend, ledge. also have Redemption Ark but that's too heavy to lug around)

The City And The Stars was my favourite Clarke when I was a kid, if that counts for anything.

Just finished Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside, the self-hatred gets a bit much at times but I suppose that's the point. Can anyone recommend any more SF with a contemporary setting (contemporary to the time it was written anyway) that doesn't involve any world-changing events occurring? SF with an interior slant I guess. Maybe there's some obvious candidates but I'm not thinking of them.

James Tiptree Jr short story anthology is on the way, I'll dip into it next week probably.

tad williams could write a whole other novel about how not to pace a novel

haha

which series are you reading? they all have terrible structure but memory, sorrow & thorn is probably the best

(i have the Bester if you'd like a lend, ledge. also have Redemption Ark but that's too heavy to lug around)

chz, but i've *cough* obtained *cough* ebooks of both of these ;)

lamp it is those! i think they have a lot of merit in various things so far but i kind of lost all hope when i was about 200pp in the second one and realised that the main characters were p much going to spend the entire novel going from point a to point b. so now i am taking a lot longer to read it.

i've always wanted to write a short story about a drug designer living in a future where drugs are legal because it's the only way the entertainment business can make any money anymore. maybe based on peter saville, somebody highly influential, but not really so much part of the mainstream and getting on a bit. has something similar been done before? must have.

problem is, i can't write for shit and my grammar's gone down the pan since uni.

@ thomp yeah its something common to all his series ive read - they build up decent momentum but he really has a hard time creating small but exciting moments in his stories - theres lots of pointless rehashing of old arguments while walking :/

that said theres some stuff in the middle books that love, & he has a lot of str8 up cool ideas, like i read them & tht 'thats really cool'.

also simon taking several hundred pages to realise he is having prophetic dreams

also i am assuming that prester john's sword is the sword that is missing? people are taking a long time to work that out too

-

xpost

see the last chunk of the first book was really well constructed, so i thought he'd got the hang of it? but i guess not. i can but hope the third one is all-action

Write it anyway max, nobody can write for shit without practicing.

enjoyed MS&T but yeah it is a bit 'stuff happens' throughout

what a rubbish criticism but you know

Can anyone recommend any more SF with a contemporary setting (contemporary to the time it was written anyway) that doesn't involve any world-changing events occurring? SF with an interior slant I guess. Maybe there's some obvious candidates but I'm not thinking of them.

John Wyndham's 'Chocky' comes to mind--small kid's mind is invaded by consciousness of friendly, advanced alien; his dad tries to work out wehat's going on and makes contact

I suspect Iain Banks is referring to people like Atwood, Paul Theroux (who wrote an atrocious SF novel called O-Zone) and so forth

Can anyone recommend any more SF with a contemporary setting (contemporary to the time it was written anyway) that doesn't involve any world-changing events occurring? SF with an interior slant I guess. Maybe there's some obvious candidates but I'm not thinking of them.

Theodore Sturgeon, esp. More Than Human.

Pattern Recognition maybe. haven't finished it.

Yeah, that and Spook Country fit. I haven't read the 3rd part of the trilogy yet.

I suspect Iain Banks is referring to people like Atwood, Paul Theroux (who wrote an atrocious SF novel called O-Zone) and so forth

O-Zone does sound pretty bad. Have never read any Atwood but I thought she had more cachet among the SF community (she has won an Arthur C Clarke award after all), although her snobbish claims that she writes speculative not science fiction won her no friends I'm sure.

Banks may also mean Ishiguro and his book about body harvest clone people. I also heard that that guy who wrote Devil In A Blue Dress wrote some dreadful SF book set in San Francisco.

Can anyone recommend any more SF with a contemporary setting (contemporary to the time it was written anyway) that doesn't involve any world-changing events occurring? SF with an interior slant I guess. Maybe there's some obvious candidates but I'm not thinking of them.

Flowers for Algernon?