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

i think its fair to say that the values of the original 'dune' stood some chance of being lost to sight in 1992, when the most recent dune-based memory was the fourth sequel herbert had rushed to completion before his death

this is an interesting set of reading lists imo

i mean, thx james

now i am going to go and to play 'the badlands of hark' all morning

that other article lost me here btw:

Look at George R.R. Martin: no literary novelist now writing could orchestrate a plot the way he does

regardless of politics, van vogt strikes me as an interesting figure and one def worthy of further critical study - prob pkd's fave sf author, one of the first dianetic/scientology converts, the source for 'Alien' and more, etc etc

i noticed this too late on craigslist. they wanted 90 dollars. :(((((((((((((((((((((((

Huge collection of science fiction paperback books......unread. They go from the early 1950s maybe earlier this is just what I have seen so far in sorting them, to the late 1980s. They are unread. In excellent to good condition as some of them have the brown age marks on the inside flap and a few of the pages. To list just a few there is Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, Avon Books, 1962.....Star Giant by Dorothy Skinkle, BT Books, 1969.....I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, Signet Books, 1956.....Space Station by James Gunn Bantam Books, 1958.....City on the Moon by Murray Leinster, 1958.....Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith, 1970.....Dark Piper by Andre Norton, 1968. This is a very small sample there are more than 1000. This must be sold as one unit. Great resale value.Thank you.

gonna haunt me for weeks...

"that other article lost me here btw"

that's too bad. one of the best things i've read in months. years even. its basically what i always want to see written in a mainstream place that is never written.

Yeah, a lot of those writers on the depau lists were generally neglected and way out of print in the early 90s, and a fair number prob still are. So many still neglected by me, for sure. Anybody read J-H.Rosny the elder, Capek, Austin Tappan Wright (Islandia, sitting on my shelf for nigh on twenty years)? Lists of neglected ideas, themes, trends, syndromes (reminds me, the mention of how narrative messes up reports on medical research??) intriguing. Was thinking of Margaret St. Clair the other day, didn't know til read this that she was Idris Seabright! Don't know how neglected he truly is, but David Lindsay's whack classic, though anti-female, is still quite the pulpadelic autodidactica
http://www.violetapple.org.uk/images/covers/vta/ballantine_1972.jpg

That's a hell of a cover for Voyage to Arcturus. I don't know whether it's neglected - always imagine it has a respectable following just because it's got a few different sets of advocates - proto-f/sf fans, scottish literature sorts, harold bloom - but actually I never hear that much about it. I do love it - it's really another level beyond most things in a similar vein from the c19th, has that genuine something-to-say force about it - desperate to get its vision of evil universe across.

(it is both much more interesting and much more boring than that cover makes out)

Oh god, I tried to read Islandia when I was like 12 and didn't get very far. Do not remember. A cross between Gulliver's Travels and that novel about the old man on the island who manipulates/takes control of our hero/narrator and some really hot art student who obviously all the men have sex w at some point?

I'll have to check that out! This was also used for the cover of A Voyage To Arcturus: "Satan's Treasures" or "The Treasures of Satan," by Jean Delville. Hexenhaus, Morbid Angel, and I think some others used it for album covers--don't remember A Voyage being this openly molten, but still
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ivgSIhLmFsc/TIzv-6oHjnI/AAAAAAAAJWk/ZfJcqe-02fw/s1600/05Delville005.jpg

Oh, The Magus, that's the other book I mentally conflate Islandia with. Which may be totally unfair.

I've only heard part of it, but entertaining MP3 interview with Samuel Delaney here: http://www.edrants.com/the-bat-segundo-show-samuel-r-delany/

Guess I better check that, kinda got off the bus after Dhalgren, although I dug that and most everything before (did enjoy some of the later nonfiction, like Heavenly Breakfast). Starting the New Yorker's Science Fiction Issue: lovely memoir/meditation from Ray Bradbury, Lethem h'mm, good comments from Anthony Burgess '73 on A Clockwork Orange, which I should maybe give another chance (his thing goes on off into related ruminations), good buzzworthy info from China Mieville, whose bit about "writers aren't in control of their subjects" also applies to Margaret Atwood's snooty but trippy bit (she's hooked on SF and she knows it); some hilarious moments in Le Guin's mental snapshots of early Science Fiction Writers Of American Olympiads

Went back to library, read some more of the NYr's SF issue: Egan's store def poetic re poignant compression of clarity, though what you seefeel is what you get, no deep implications; sure is fresh though. Also available in New Yorker's Twitterfeed. Junot Diaz's story starts great, ends disappointingly, at least for me.

That's Jennifer Egan.

almost impulse-bought a collection by ted chiang just now but chickened out. big junot diaz blurbs on it. they must be pals. i like that it was put out by a local press. straight outta easthampton, ma. also ogled complete ballard stories. thing was huge. but didn't feel like shelling out for it. might go back for the chiang though. bought the new ugly things magazine instead...

the chiang collection (stories of your life and others) is very good

Yeah this thread (the one we're on right this very nanoosec) has lotta Chiang comments and links, at least one to a story, I think (and that collection is the complete works, so far)

Almost, but don't think it has "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" and "The Lifecycle of Software Objects"

delany wrote his best books after dhalgren, honest guv

i need to find somewhere to read the new yorker this week, i guess

(the Egan story, "Black Box," does imply more than I initially recalled, right after finishing it; evan before that, was thinking, "Wow") It's one of those double issues, June 4 & 11, so won't disappear into the library stacks or dumpster too quickly. Some related podcasts etc on their site too.

Oh yeah, meant to ask: what post-Dhalgren Delany should I read? Seemed to be getting pedantic with the porn and math.

Go in this order, imo: Stars in My Pocket, Tales of Neveryon, Triton

Can you briefly explain why that order?

I like the first two better than Triton, and Stars and Tales of Neveryon cover fairly different ground, though there's some overlap. All three bridge the gap pretty neatly between his early sf and the more explicit porn of later books.

its important to bridge that porn gap sometimes.

finished frederik pohl's *the man who ate the world* collection. good stuff. satire and all that. now trying to crack the van vogt code one more time. wish me luck. i don't find him easy going. some sentences honestly read like they have been translated from english into russian and russian into chinese and chinese into english.

Ha, I have same Van Vogt problem, but I eventually learned to like Nina Simone, so why not him too?

I read Charles Platt's interview with Van Vogt. He (van Vogt) had a system of using his subconscious by waking himself up at timed intervals through the night and writing down the result. He explained this in a calm, matter-of-fact way. His inner life (whatever it was) remained utterly opaque, and his only interest seemed to be in his methods, which always worked. He was a strange person.

okay, this is actually a much quicker read. from the 40's. *Masters Of Time*. and i can definitely envision a young PKD reading this and going YES! such a loop-de-loop backdoor portal thru time and space. but his descriptive powers are just so friggin' weird and vague. when someone has a thought its always a cold vibrant desolate thought-vision instead of a thought. or a shock will slice through someone like a cold steely razor-sharp flattened thing. instead of shocking them with, you know, A KNIFE!

or instead of slicing through them with a knife. see, i even become powerless to describe his concentrated...indescribable...shadow vibrations!

see, the trick is to picture an alien typing up a pulp sci-fi novel. cuz the construction and language can be quite demented. and out of this world.

which reminds me, i was gonna start a harry keeler thread, but i've never actually read any of his books. just read that neil gaiman thing in the NYT and then went to the harry keeler society website and got lost there for a an hour or more:

http://site.xavier.edu/polt/keeler/

the paragraph that gaiman quoted was enough to hook me:

“For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter’s ‘Barr-Bag,’ which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2,163 pearl buttons; nor of — in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel — or Suing Sophie!”

NYT thing here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/books/review/neil-gaiman-shares-his-reading-habits.html?pagewanted=all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Stephen_Keeler

the guy who puts out the keeler reprints has the most incredible catalog:

http://www.ramblehouse.com/alphabeticalauthor.htm

i love the disclaimer on this massive keeler:

THE MATILDA HUNTER MURDER

It all began with a mysterious black satchel stitched closed with silver wire. Mrs. Matilda Hunter, Jerry Evans’ landlady, finds the satchel and leaves it in his room—and then is heinously murdered. Before long, Jerry finds out about the contents of the satchel—a device known as the Michaux Death Ray—and he’s off on an odyssey that in the first Ramble House edition was in three volumes. An odyssey that only a died-in-the-wool Keelerite could handle. If you have what it takes to follow the webwork master’s labyrinthine plot, this is the 1.5 pound book for you. Otherwise you might want to try an easier Keeler before tackling this one.

This 589-page trade paperback contains the complete text of the novel written in 1931.

THE SKULL IN THE BOX

A man is standing on a street corner holding a crimson hatbox. An archbishop walks up to him and asks, “What’s in the box, my son?” The man replies, “Wah Lee’s skull. I cracked Vann’s pete.”

From this unlikely scenario, Harry Stephen Keeler has fashioned a four-volume courtroom saga that is unique in American literature. Originally published in the 30s as four books:

THE MAN WITH THE MAGIC EARDRUMS

THE MAN WITH THE CRIMSON BOX

THE MAN WITH THE WOODEN SPECTACLES

THE CASE OF THE LAVENDER GRIPSACK

it is now, for the first time, published in one trade pa-perback or hardback volume. Some people consider the SKULL IN THE BOX series Harry Stephen Keeler’s masterpiece.

There are 350,000 words on the 436 pages in this book. Read them and you’ll know why Bill Pronzini called Keeler “the first great alternative writer.” $25

he kinda makes gertrude stein and sam beckett look like pikers. first chapter of The Man With The Magic Eardrums:

http://www.ramblehouse.com/magiceardrumschapter.htm

man so many things i want to read from this thread! i'm still reading wild seed (but nearing the end) and i am thoroughly in love with octavia butler.

picked up three pamela sargent-edited Women Of Wonder paperback collections. excited to read them. first in the series has a long excellent intro/essay by sargent on the history of women writers of sci-fi and also women IN sci-fi through the decades. very interesting/illuminating. first collection has stories by: judith merril, katherine maclean, marion zimmer bradley, anne mccaffrey, sonya dorman, kit reed, kate wilhelm, carol ernshwiller, ursula k. le guin, chelsea quinn yarbro, joanna russ, and vonda n. mcintyre. the stories are from the 40's to the 70's. anyway, that's what i'm gonna read next.

I'm going to have to just break down and order The Female Man from Amazon or something. 35 years of going to bookstores and I've never seen any Joanna Russ in any store around here. Fucken boonies.

i want her novels too. i might just check the store around the corner from me. hey, he had some rudy rucker books, so you never know. he's got andre norton up the butt though. man oh man i have never seen so many norton paperbacks in one place. maybe a hundred.
at one of my pal's used record stores i picked up: jack vance - future tense (4 story collection) and alfred bester - the computer connection. i was tempted to get the three volume PKD story collections they had but i didn't go for it. i have so many of his books that i haven't even read yet. plus they were ten bucks apiece and i didn't feel like spending the 30 bucks. wouldn't have been any fun buying just one. they had some nice hardcover dick originals too but they were priced fancy.

I started reading a Kate Wilhelm last night -- the Clewiston Test -- and my wife got all excited at the idea that there was such a thing as feminist SF (apropos of Russ). I forget how sealed off SF is to normal people.

Finished LLaurent Binet's HHhH, which was pretty gripping. THe actual prose is nothing special (though that could be the translator, who is a bad writer of English novels), but the story and the telling of it are really amazing.

That last bit is in the wrong thread.

adding all these feminist sci-fi writers to my list!

you have to remember, the first sci-fi novel was written by a feminist woman.

Olaf Stapledon?