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

I remember practically nothing about A Fire Upon the Deep other than I read it in college and absolutely loved it.

Evil supercomputer and Medieval dog civilization.

The dogs are the only thing i remember. They were cool though.

It's got dogs in? Damn I'm there.

dan i can't tell if i would like otherland or not, it looks like it could be a fun romp i guess? but if it's as slapdash in construction as ms&t is it will probably annoy me

it seems like he has tried to write a trilogy three times, and each time it has ended up four books. that is not encouraging in terms of whether his others will be less of a mess.

anyway i think i'm done with this sort of thing for a bit maybe? & if not i have steven erikson's 4th & 5th hanging around and i should read them so i can get rid of them before i move house, i think

tbh Otherland is the polar opposite of a "fun romp"; that is part of what makes it so great

i think otherland generally shares the same structural problems that ms&t & his shadow/e series suffer from it has an interesting premise & strong, mostly well drawn characters but meanders a bit too much in the middle stages. i remember feeling like he was stalling w/ a couple of the middle books either because he wasnt quite sure how to end it or he just had too many ideas for worlds he didnt want to throw out but he def ran a couple of the plotlines too long

I don't disagree with that, but I do think he is better working in a SF milieu rather than fantasy; the core idea is much stronger in Otherland and that carried me through the lulls much easier than what was going on in MS&T and Shadow*

yeah otherland feels more prescient the more time passes but its also a p big commitment

I warmed to Foundation and Empire by the time it ended... I liked some of the SFnal touches and found the Mule character interesting, even if the closing twist was something that I could see coming a mile off (partly because Asimov prefigures it heavily).

finished 'to green angel tower: storm' earlier. i think i read about 600 pages of it today. at one point my gf started reading it over my shoulder and went "my god, this is tripe"

"baby you're not here to think"

ew

the sentence that led to that opinion was something like "The Thrithings-woman lay back, her hair a shining black curtain upon the pillow"

was a little sad to note tad's prose go downhill throughout. not massively + not like he had a huge height to fall but. the first volume is free of elegant variation, and mostly avoids melodramatic FEELINGS stuff. they go downhill

the third was pretty well plotted though. a lot of the pieces that fell into place at the end it was obvious that they were going to but obvious in a chunky and satisfying way. not that there wasn't a lot of slack. i mean he somehow thought it was necessary to feature the series' third and fourth chapters of 'someone walks around in the dark'. but it wasn't a whole novel of slack. also i was worried there were going to be ~400 pages of simon and miriamele walking about and being pissy and there weren't; those bits were pretty painful but he got through them quickly enough.

what i remember most about the last book was that simon's climb up the sorceror's tower was in turns genuinely unsettling & the 'color' for a really cool ad&d adventure for characters level 12-15

reading one of those Orbit collections (this one from 1972) and it is waaaaay uneven as far as talent goes and more then half the writers in the book i've never heard of, and so far what this collection has done is make me want to seek out more gene wolfe and more frederik pohl. so that's a good thing. i'm still a relative newbie when it comes to sci-fi and i'm definitely more interested in the 50s/60s/70s roots rock then stuff being written now. but i'll get to now later. i promise.

Yeah, aside from a few quality collections like the Aldiss omnibus, the strike rate of yer basic anthology is very poor.

the novelty of the universe and orbit yearly collections was that nothing was a reprint. all original material.

i've read some really great best of the year collections though. there were some really great years! with other collections it does depend on the editor/compiler. aldiss was good at it.

i read a recent-ish - for me anyway. it probably came out in the 90's. - collection of space opera/adventure yarns that was REALLY good. completely entertaining. and a lot of the writers were new to me. i should try and find it. i can't remember the title. almost every story was a hoot. and the stories were newer too. not old old stuff.

The Gardner Dozois-edited yearly collections are usually pretty good: I find them to be at least half full of great stuff, and if you buy the el-cheapo UK editions that's pretty good value for money

I only have #3 of James Gunn's "Road to Science Fiction" anthology series, but it's so good I'd like to find the others.

Yeah that looks like a decent selection, albeit with a few old perennials on the anthology circuit. Will look out for Gardner Dozois, and for Scott's, if he remembers the name :)

Oh, "The New Space Opera" I got recently, that was Gardner Dozois, and yeah it was prety decent.

The Gardner Dozois-edited yearly collections are usually pretty good: I find them to be at least half full of great stuff, and if you buy the el-cheapo UK editions that's pretty good value for money

Yeah, I've asked for the latest Mammoth Book of Best New SF for the past few birthdays/Christmases and have been fairly pleased with them: always fairly solid at least, and usually a couple of stories that set me tracking down more by the authors.

(And usually at least one story so horrible and unnecessary that I swear off the author for life, but hey, that's a useful service too, and maybe you'll love the ones I hate.)

My only peeve is that I once came close to picking up one I already had in a charity shop because it had a different cover, but I can only find one cover for that volume on the internet, so unless it was a trade edition I'm beginning to think I imagined it.

No, I think you didn't imagine it: a number of them were repackaged with "classic" style artwork (ie bug-eyed monsters, retro rocketships, etc) and given slightly different titles (ie the Mammoth Book of Amazing SF, etc) and flogged off on the overseas remainder market--I've got a few of them, and they don't show up on Amazon, etc.

found it. and it is one of the dozois volumes. there are two volumes. the good old stuff and the good new stuff. i've only read the new one:

http://www.amazon.com/Good-New-Stuff-Adventure-Tradition/dp/0312198906/ref=pd_sim_b_1

did i already talk about how much i loved *four ways to forgiveness* by Le Guin on here? i might have. i still think about that book. i never wanted it to end. gotta read more of her hainish books.

reading steven erikson's fourth novel, 'house of chains'. this one i feel like i can't even risk reading in the same room as the gf to be honest

She struggled, then her head snapped back, eyes suddenly wild.

Karsa laughed, throwing her down on the bed.

Animal sounds came from her mouth, her long-fingered hands snatching up at him as he moved over her.

The female clawed at him, her back arching in desperate need.

She was unconscious before he was done, and when he drew away there was blood between them. She would live, he knew. Blood-oil was impatient with broken flesh.

Jesus Christ.

Referring to women as "females" like that is one of my biggest literary pet peeves.

I had considered spelling out what would count as "horrible and unnecessary" in my previous post about short story collections, but now I don't need to, because that is exactly the sort of thing I meant.

i was confused and thought you were talking about steve erickson the american writer but i googled and i'm okay now. the canadian guy's real name according to wiki is STEVE RUNE LUNDIN and i don't get why he didn't keep that for his books cuz it kinda has an epic flair. and its funny that stephen r. donaldson is such a big fan of the canadian guy cuz i was just looking at some of the old covenant paperbacks the other day and marveling that i actually read them when i was a kid. (i don't read too much fantasy stuff)

Jesus Christ.

Referring to women as "females" like that is one of my biggest literary pet peeves.

anyway, i'm reading this now. did you know that me and rich corben share a birthday?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zNw9VE7Y3Hc/TBFIxXBT1MI/AAAAAAAADW4/X4PJp77QOIw/s1600/fredricBrown.jpg

Aw! Huggggggzzzzzzz xoxoxoxox

I'd like to point out, not as a defense but as a clarification, that the tone of the 3rd party narrator in Erikson's books shifts to match the point of view character, so it's not like the entire book is all "ungh ungh rape the females" 24/7, nor is that (IMO) necessarily intended to be a value-neutral presentation of what is happening in that scene. Karsa is kind of a heroic figure, but he's also a massively brutal caveman asshole.

i thought about trying to be fair about the context but then i didn't bother

really enjoying the brown book. do i need to read ben bova? got something called the exiles trilogy in paperback at the store. 3booksinone. maybe i'll just read it. how bad could it be?

so that brown story "arena". star trek ripped that off for that famous lizard-man episode, no?

okay yeah of course it was. just checked wiki.

Yep.

I don't have much time for "Arena". Ok it's not quite the kind of story that could be set in any time or place, nevertheless it's basically an unilluminating tale of mano-a-mano combat, with a non-thrilling attempt to up the stakes and the sci-fi element provided by some blue sand, the least inspired alien ever, and a highly evolved ultra-intelligent ineffable non-corporeal entity, who is a bit of a dick.

A propos of nothing but I am so over sex scenes involving A Magic Penis. Even in books and stories that otherwise give every indication of being written for women, the sex is always always just a lead-up to penetration leading to orgasm for both participants, always.

its funny that until i started reading sci-fi 3 or 4 years ago i never really read books with much sex in them at all. and sci-fi can certainly contain some weirdness about sex/the sexes. to put it mildly. nerds are kinda weird about sex in general. hey, speaking of rich corben, i've been a fan since i was a kid, but i can't even begin to explain his obsessions.

i don't read sword/sorcery/fantasy stuff and i'd imagine that's where a lot of the worst offenders are in the realm of magic wand lit.

Fredric Brown is pretty great. Have you read' What Mad Universe', about a guy trapped in a parallel universe which runs according to all the 'rules' of pulp SF? I have a feeling we might have talked about it elsewhere on ILB, but I'm too tired to find it

Yeah, we are always talking about WMU. What about his detective stuff? The Fabulous Clipjoint, The Screaming Mimi, etc.I keep meaning to read it but never have.

I've read a couple of Fredric Brown pulp crime novels, had no idea he wrote sf too! The Screaming Mimi is pretty great as I recall it, not quite in Charles Willeford territory but worth a read for sure.

there used to be a bar called screaming mimi's in new york. there may still be. it's where all the just-off-the-boat college grads would gather for frenzied flirting.

wait a minute i'm getting confused now. screaming mimi's is apparently a fashion boutique. what am i think of?? gah, old.

A propos of nothing but I am so over sex scenes involving A Magic Penis. Even in books and stories that otherwise give every indication of being written for women, the sex is always always just a lead-up to penetration leading to orgasm for both participants, always.

So OTM. Looking at you, Charlaine Harris...

yeah i really liked what mad universe. and we have talked about it on here. i would definitely like to read some of his crime novels. never see them.