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

tales of the AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination Service
Of which "Ghost V" is particularly awesome.

Neither book has the mighty "Zirn Left Unguarded, the Jenjik Palace in Flames, Jon Westerly Dead" but you can read it in The Space Opera Renaissance if need be.

Or track down the audio of The Sluglords podcast, if that is still out there on the intranetz.

now reading:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_31aMv_j-6c4/TCdE3lKkmaI/AAAAAAAAAG0/j3PoSv-riRM/s1600/the+companions.jpg

I'll bite: how is it...?

I have a couple of unread Teppers that are supposed to be classics - 'Beauty' and 'Grass' - and which look cool, but I remember reading one book by her, 'Gibbon's Decline & Fall', which was so spectacularly bad that I have never quite steeled my self to tackle them yet

i like it so far! entertaining.

Not half as entertaining as this I'll bet:
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Orgasm-Robbery-Sheri-Tepper/dp/B000GE3OOY/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt

re-reading Jon Armstrong

why is no one else as infatuated with this guy as I am

Make your case---what can he do that's fabulous?

uh well let's see - on a formal, stylistic level he is just a solid storyteller. Nothing especially flashy or unusual in the way he writes his first-person narratives but they are expertly paced and sturdily constructed. There are no head-turning po-mo textual experiments or unreliable narrators (well, maybe a little) but he is clearly well-versed in the conventions of the sci-fi noir and bildungsroman traditions and he draws on these to great effect in both books. What is really striking about him, to me, is his skill at extending current pop cultural trends to logical extremes in a way that is both funny and alarming. there's a mixture of fascination, horror, and satire in the way he incorporates fashion, celebrity culture, consumerism, pop music, drugs, etc. that make it clear that (as with all SF) he is writing about *right now* while also distorting and inflating current trends into bizarre and laughable shapes. "Saleswarriors" that battle to the death over customers while shouting slogans at each other. Pop music that is played at such ferocious speeds and volume levels that you need protective gear to endure it. Celebrity clans that live in shopping mall fortresses. And the one that always makes me laugh - competitive ironing! He's not without precedents, but he does have a unique vision that goes way beyond the standard cyberpunk playbook of ecological meltdowns, genetic engineering etc., ideas so many modern writers seem stuck in.

I feel like I thumb through so many modern sci-fi books that are like "in a post-apocalyptic future shadowy corporation-states are battling for supremacy, [hapless protagonist] is searching for [object/mysterious person of importance] but may have gotten more than s/he bargained for" and Armstrong seems to go so far beyond that garden variety stuff.

Hate it when that happens. You've convinced me, Shakey.

the competitive ironing thing is a good example of why I love him so much - on the one hand it's a throwaway joke that's based on a ridiculous premise (lol why would anyone want to watch another person iron a shirt), but the way it's presented (in passing, as an offhand reference) it's clearly a parody of current competitive reality TV shows, AND it makes perfect sense for the characters - intensely serious but vapid fashionistas - to be into it.

and now every time I iron a shirt I think "yeah look at that motherfucking crease, where's my gold medal" lol

Ironing is not so easy when you're stressed! Some producer will prob lift this.

here's a brief but good interview with him

the bit about Ye Olde Costume Shoppe names is funny

Just looked at ebook samples of Yarn and Gray. Seems promising, maybe Gray more so.

First paragraph of that interview is hilarious.

Too bad Momus isn't around here anymore, Shakey, sounds like his kind of thing.

love who blurbs this book i bought today:

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What a horrible cover layout

half price sale at the store around the corner. i always load up.

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Skot's earlier post reminds me that I was thinking of starting a Books With The Most Diverse List of Blurbers thread the other day.

Is Alas, Babylon any good? I remember always seeing that on the list of other books I might like in the back pages of whatever paperback I had bought in fact I recently I bought some old Robert a Sheckley paperbacks and Alas, Babylon was still there just like I remembered it.

i dunno, i just got it today. james m. on here will tell you all about it. i'm 100% certain that he has read it without actually knowing.

Loved Slam when it came out. Not really scifi. Love that Sibyl Sue Blue cover! Never heard of that one. Unfamiliar w that pohl book too, but he's pretty reliable.

Ha, yes, have read Alas, Babylon. It's quite good, in that earnest, slightly starchy 1950s slick magazine fiction style, but despite its best efforts it struggles tho deal with just how horrible the scenario it deals with would really be. (ie some characters biggest worry after massive thermonuclear war is how they keep their local post office running, etc)

also got more bruce sterling paperbacks even though i haven't read anything by him yet? i guess i'm optimistic. and some kate wilhelm books i didn't have. and some klassics i haven't read. camp concentration. rendezvous with rhama. which i might actually own already. venus plus x. also these:

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Camp Concentration may be Disch's best. Great book, like a long goofy twilight zone.

Big fan of sterling's early stuff too

i'm really enjoying the sheri tepper book i posted above. lots of cool and weird touches/sub-plots. very engaging.

i can never get over how many andre norton paperbacks the store around the corner has. well over a hundred. so many harry turtledove books too. tons. don't know anything about him. also a million c.j. cherryh books. scores of cherryh. and i don't think i've read one. the one sci-fi norton book i read i really liked a lot. don't have much interest in the fantasy s&s stuff though.

okay, turtledove doesn't seem like my kind of guy. lots of what if aliens won the civil war and the japanese took over america with robert e. lee and stuff like that. alternate reality stuff kinda my least favorite stuff. looking at the old paperbacks today i saw at least three alternate jfk assassination books and then i saw a stephen king book about jfk that i don't even remember coming out. big yawn for that kind of thing. one of the reasons i could never read libra by delillo. i'm just not a boomer.

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

i mean i think the actual jfk event is interesting. i like watching archival footage sometimes. i was just watching oswald police station footage the other day. but i'm not a conspiracy person. or a what if fan. i didn't even like the marvel what if comics when i was kid.

Some sterling comments on Sterling upthread. Have you read The Man In The High Castle? Not like any other alternate history I can think of. Even "The Garden of Forking Paths" sucks, compared to "The Secret Miracle", which is also a unique-in-my-experience alt-history (the former is an intricate yet flimsy party hat [I know, the freaked-out narrator is poignantly grasping at straws], the latter is also under mortal pressure, yet so very damned organic.)

haven't read high castle yet. i have a copy. kinda figure PKD would take things around the bend though.

there are always exceptions in other words.

tried one turtledove once-- a non-alternate-history called Supervolcano about Yellowstone erupting. Got about 80p in, and it was still the day-to-day boring lives of numerous thin cardboard characters, with no eruption yet. flicked ahead another 50p, and still no eruption, so I gave up. this limited exposure told me he is NOT a very good or interesting writer. it was like reading the prose version of the first hour of a Roland Emmerich film stretched out FOREVER.

Never really read Turtledove but the impression I get is that what he brings to the table is an academic's taste for research and typing combined with a healthy heaping of sitzfleisch galore, rising to the challenge to make the likes of Isaac Asimov and James Michener looks like wimps, but with the end product perhaps lacking in any kind of stylish writing or depth or humor or wit. But who can be sure, he's written so many dozens of book, I'm sure somebody can rep for some of them. (haha xp)

I have read a few Turtledoves; Guns of the South is a O_o but enjoyable standalone, and I read two or three of the WorldWar series, which I kinda dug too: World War II + Aliums/reptile things. Wee! Kinda takes WWII nerdery and Civil War nerdery to the far reaches of nerd-dom but hey, I had fun :)

Inspired by this last post, I just now Googled "Civil War zombies" and got a lot of thangs, most promisingly several reviews of Matt Betts' Odd Men Out(yeah, gets confused with John Sayles' good throwing-the-World-Series movie, Odd Man Out). Here's David Pitts, in Booklist:

...the Union and the Confederacy have put the war on hold and joined forces to deal with the living dead...they converge on the mysterious Outpost Two Thirteen, where they hope to find the key to disposing of the chewers—as they call the zombies—once and for all. But what they find will shock and terrify them, while absolutely delighting the book’s readers. This is a wonderfully written and gutsy novel, the kind of story that could easily have fallen flat on its face, if not for its author’s storytelling skills: he makes us believe a whole lot of completely unbelievable things all at once (especially one really unbelievable thing, even more unbelievable than the zombies)...this steampunk-horror-historical-thriller crossbreed is an amazing book.

Oh yeah, and this one I mentioned on thomp's best story from the penguin science fiction omnibus, 1973 thread:
The only good alternate Civil War I've read is in Year's Best SF 15: "This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe," by Robert Charles Wilson. It's based something I'd been thinking about too, re not a choice between having or not having conflict, which had been building up long before war was officially declared. And you couldn't just say, "Go, and down't let the Mason-Dixon Line hit you in the ass on the way out." Because the Confederacy wouldn't be going anywhere geographically, except maybe expanding out West; they did have designs on extending slavery to the Territories way before secession. So, this story zooms in on a situation involving the effects of "peace" on particular characters, black and white. Plenty of action, but the main impact is emotional, and succinctly conveyed.

― dow, Monday, 9 April 2012 18:48 (1 year ago) Permalink

I loved Slam so much. Opening chapter with the drive down to Galveston with the annoying lawyer who ends phone calls with bad lawyer jokes is ultra-classic. Would be a fantastic opening to a movie.

By who? (Guessing it's not the Hornby I just Googled)

Slam is by Lewis Shiner. it's not really sf.

Coincidentally to Dow's repost, am reading Robert Charles Wilson's new one, Burning Paradise. Really good so far: Earth invaded without even noticing it by a "distributed lifeform" that forms a technologically useful thin extra layer to the atmosphere.

Harold Waldrop alt-history thumbsup. haven't read turtledove but assuming waldrop is the superior harry.

My younger brother has asked for 'sci fi/fantasy' books for Christmas. He's really only read LOTR, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones (which is odd because given that he's a big fan of video games and rpgs and D&D you'd think he'd've read more of this sort of stuff by now)

I have a few ideas for what I might get him but thought I'd put the question out there - so does anyone have any suggestions for good sci fi/fantasy books or series for new readers? Any suggestions appreciated...

I'd get him a big Golden Age anthology (30s-50s), a big New Wave anthology (60s-70s) and an anthology of 80s and beyond that includes a bit of cyberpunk. Dozens of authors, let him figure his own path from there.

I always liked mirrorshades: the cyberpunk anthology even though none of the stories had people brain jacking into terminals or anything.

Is that in print? I just recently bought the ebook of Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Evolution and Revolution for pretty cheap.

http://images.amcnetworks.com/blogs.amctv.com/wp-content/uploads/mt-legacy/scifi-scanner/jcblbmar.jpg

yikes that's a big bad picture. sorry.