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

Guess you're not the Dirty Vicar on twitter then?

nope, have not yet been assimilated to Twitter. A bit annoying to hear that the Dirty Vicar name has been nabbed already, as I bet has my real name and every possible other name I might want to pick.

Xpost: oh wait, this is their recap rather than review I am looking at.

Well, a tweet by whoever stole your name was quoted in a piece about negative fan reaction to the latest episode. I just assume every moniker on the internet is unique

James Tiptree Jr aka Alice Sheldon is my new favourite sf writer, although supposedly her novels weren't great. But the short story collection I've been reading (Her Smoke Rose Up Forever) contains some astonishing pieces. Don't think there's too many sf writers who write in the present tense much either, it creates a pretty strange atmosphere.

That book is terrific, especially the Arkham House edition with Klimt cover and Clute intro. Bought the bio but haven't read it yet

started on Algebraist and just couldn't get into it so for now decided to read hitchhikers guide, need some comic relief sci fi.

I have just started I AM LEGEND. I was particularly creeped out by all the vampire zombie ladies trying to lure the hero out of his house for sexy time.

Yes, the power of his masculine appeal is so strong, even undead wimmenz can feel it.

I just finished Theodore Sturgeon's 'More than Human' - I really enjoyed it, just what I was looking for after a run of very mediocre SF novels. Surprised to find out afterwards that it was published in 1953. Definitely a precursor to New Wave. The story revolves around the emergence of a new type of human, a 'gestalt' symbiotically linked organism, consisting of several ordinary humans with different psychic abilities. It's a fixup novel I believe and the first two stories are the best - it loses steam in the concluding section, but generally very well-written, very unusual take on the 'next-stage-of-evolution' type story (probably hackneyed implausible concept now, but the execution is good enough to get round it - I can imagine it must have felt extremely radical for SF in 1953).

Yeah, I remember liking the story a lot better than the novel version.

i have almost finished that steven erickson novel. oy.

i almost bought a copy of 'rogue moon' this morning, decided to wait until the next time the bookstall guy was at the market, now regret this decision

rogue moon is ridiculous.

I can't think of any Sturgeon I wouldn't recommend 100%.

i read rogue moon as alastair reynolds mentioned it in an interview. there is a good story in there (split personalities, exploration of alien artefact), but there's a lot of guff around it, yes.

I can't think of any Sturgeon I wouldn't recommend 100%.

― Mr. Patrick Batman (WmC), Thursday, June 23, 2011 12:44 PM (33 minutes ago)

Just reread Rendezvous With Rama for the first time in probably 25 years (after first giving up on it last week). The plot & scenario are really compelling, but Clarke really couldn't create an interesting human character, eh. I suppose you don't need to when you have THE CYLINDRICAL SEA and BIOTS etc but it'd be nice if they were a little less dull. I'm guessing the sequels are unreadable tosh?

Idk, I read the sequels so they can't be literally unreadable, on the other paw I don't remember anything about them.

Aw, come on, I really liked Rogue Moon!

Reynolds probably talked about it because he basically ripped it off (admitting as much in the story itself) in 'Diamond Dogs'

None other than M. John Harrison put Rogue Moon on his list of favorites so I imagine it can't be that bad. Can't even remember if I ever read it, been intending to (re)read it for a year

'Diamond Dogs' I remember being really great up until the total lack of an ending.

Looking forward to the new Reynolds actually (although i haven't read his latest yet). More optimistic apparently

just started reading the man who folded himself and the introduction suggests rama's non-characters were an intentional throwback to an earlier era of sf (it comes up because rama won the nebula/hugo awards over gerrold's book)

My problem with Rogue Moon is all the cod psychologising. I've no problem in theory with examining the detailed internal lives of characters - I love Henry James after all - but when your characters are all one dimensional caricature arseholes(*) and everything's viewed through a kind of bogus freudian filter, then no thanks. Honestly there were not a few points in it when people's motivations and actions made literally no sense to me.

(*) Connington is amoral and manipulative, openly testing Hawks and anyone else he meets for weaknesses. He takes Hawks to see Al Barker, an adventurer and thrill-seeker. Hawks also meets Claire Pack, a sociopath of a different kind. Where Connington covets power, and Barker seems to love death, Claire enjoys using sex, or the prospect of sex, to manipulate men.

i don't think diamond dogs is the only thing that AR's written that rogue moon has influenced. am thinking of the other alien structures with traps in them (the mazey sphere, the repeated paths thing in pushing ice). but these may be sf tropes, i don't think burgis invented them.

latest AR, Terminal World, disappointed me. reminded me of Dark Tower or Mad Max with balloons. needed (many) more spaceships.

next one is the first part of the 11 parter iirc.

not quite? according to you know who

In June 2009 Reynolds signed a new deal, worth £1 million, with his British publishers for ten books to be published over the next ten years.[5]
He is presently working on the first novel in a trilogy called Poseidon's Children (Previously know by Reynolds working title, the 11k series), a hard sf trilogy dealing with the expansion of the human species into the solar system and beyond, and the emergence of Africa as a spacefaring, technological super-state several centuries down the line over the next 11,000 years.[6] The first book will be titled Blue Remembered Earth, book 1 of Poseidon's Children.[7]

ah, there's the confusion right there:

"Previously know by Reynolds working title, the 11k series"

thank fuck though, no-one should ever have to read an 11-part series.

i'm hoping they're all going to be revelation space length 8)

and that i live long enough to read them all.

(only other decalogy i can think of was l ron hubbard)

i liked that ben bova book! the three book trilogy thing. properly epic and all. and sad. i definitely felt like i was on that damn ship with them for centuries. i like books like that. where you kinda can't believe where it ended up given where it started.

sounds like my kinda thing, will look out for it.

i just started this book. had to start somewhere with her! she's only written 34734837442424 books.

http://www.andre-norton.org/coverart_gallery/android_at_arms_1.jpg

http://www.andre-norton.org/coverart_gallery/android_at_arms_2.jpg

i love pictures of andre norton.

http://cdn3.iofferphoto.com/img/item/172/736/495/X24XBq8dGE5osKS.jpg

http://i3.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens2152220module11280018photo_1220293661AndreNorton-lady04.jpg

huh, i think she taught me second grade

I read "I Am Legend" (or "I AM TEH LEGEND") by Richard Matheson over the weekend. It is really gripping. Some may say, of course, that it is not SF.

in other news, loving the Andre Norton pictures. I would have enjoyed her books even more if I had known what she and her cats look like.

I also love the Andre Norton pics.

More AH than SF, but I finished Kingsley Amis' The Alteration recently and enjoyed it greatly. I'm wondering if I should seek out The Anti-Death League or even New Maps of Hell or the Spectrum anthologies he edited (probably out of print at this stage)?

New Maps is very interesting, but obviously about 60 years out of date. His fantasy novel, 'The Green Man', is bloody good, too. Haven't read The Anti-Death League. He did another SF novel, Russian Hide and Seek, about a USSR-invaded UK, which I also haven't read, but is meant to be good.

i liked 'new maps', but remember not a lot about it: its fannishness, its enthusiasm. not sure what its actual arguments were.

I'm finding "The Snail On The Slope" bu Boris & Arkady Strugatsky slightly hard going, it's written in this pedantic kind of style that just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe because it's in translation? I get the same feeling from Stanislaw Lem sometimes. Could be that translators aren't really writers themselves so don't know how to make it flow.

Speaking of which, are there popular SF or fantasy writers from non-English speaking countries? Not counting Murakami, Kafka etc who only edge onto the genre occasionally. Pretty much all the major names I can think of are native English speakers, it seems weird there aren't more global names.

Been reading Lem's 'Memoirs Found in a Bathtub' and you could say it is his own reading of Kafka. Brill!

Many translators are writers, or if they are not they are steeped in literature, or seem v 'literary' (yes those quotes again)

The latest Big Thing is the chap who wrote The Quantum Thief, who is Finnish, but he writes in English

The Anti-Death League is not at all science-fiction iirc but very good. (Has an amazing threatening poem from God written in the style of an omnipotent and illiterate schoolyard sadist or bully). The Green Man is, as JM says, marvellous. Russian Hide-and-Seek is risible. I'm not sure whether it's as bad as many say, because I remember thinking some parts were quite good - savoured of It Happened Here slightly I think, but it's all a bit weird and not really in a good way, in a way that sails close to very bad in fact.

I thought there had been a thread on foreign language sci-fi, but I must have been thinking of this, which is fairly brief:
Is there a German analogue to Jules Verne & H.G. Wells?

I also ordered the Franz Rottensteiner-edited anthology of mainland European SF, "View From Another Shore", after reading James Redd's post on that thread, but have not read it yet. Also unread on my translations of foreign SF pile: "The Invention of Morel" by Adolfo Bioy Casares. I have no excuse for not having read this yet, it's only 100 pages long, if that! Comes with a glowing foreword by Borges too, which is as far as I've got.

Maybe someone who actually reads books instead of just buying them can recommend something.

I finished A Fire Upon the Deep and it was amazing. I've got A Deepness in the Sky queued up but first:

Connie Willis - To Say Nothing About the Dog. I'm about 3/4 through and I love it but I am a sucker for time travel stories set in Victorian England and that particular brand of madcap, everything goes hilariously wrong plot. I will surely circle back to read her other time travel books.

Then I'm taking a turn into spec fic land and reading the new Sookie book and then the new Gail Carriger. I should probably be a little ashamed of my love of those series but I am too thrilled at the prospect of spending a disgustingly hot three-day weekend in a dim, air conditioned apartment and wallowing in genre fiction to feel shame.

Also, Racialicious.com is doing an Octavia Butler bookclub, starting in July with Seed to Harvest - http://www.racialicious.com/2011/06/29/introducing-the-octavia-butler-book-club/. I think I'll use that as an excuse to read the OB books I haven't read yet.

Haha I have all the Carriger books and eagerly await them. Bite me, genre purists.

Connie Willis was one of my votes in the "all-time" poll for Doomsday Book, so full steam ahead there too!

I was hoping you would pipe up with some Carriger love! <3

They're getting a little stale, though, I think. The romance part was over with far too early, and the last book felt like hardly anything happened in it. Higher hopes for the next.

I liked the last one. Hot lesbian spy, rogue vampires, Alexia scorned by polite society. Good stuff. Plus they take about 6 hours to read so if there isn't a huge payoff, I don't feel like I've wasted too much time.

non-English sf: this thing looks cool but I haven't read it, either: http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Latinos-Anthology-Science-Classics/dp/0819566349/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309531313&sr=1-1

i just got a paperback of soviet sci-fi short stories. bought 10 or 12 boxes of sci-fi/fantasy books for the store today.