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

and it's not really sci-fi...i don't think. more like hippie thinking.

lol some great ones in there. my favorite era of sci-fi art.

Smashing pictures.

Yep. But that Sunburst cover lies! The kids in that book are not demon spawn, they can't help having ESP! They didn't ask to be nuked as genes! I got way involved with the heroine and her crew when I encountered them at 13, then all over again at 20.

i don't know if you guys know anything about Philip Wylie, but he was a very interesting and strange guy. i've never actually read any of his sci-fi. he's probably most famous for his punk rock manifesto from 1942 called A Generation of Vipers.

"During World War II, writing The Paradise Crater (1945) resulted in his house arrest by the federal government; in it, he described a post-WWII 1965 Nazi conspiracy to develop and use uranium-237 bombs,[2] months before the first successful atomic test at Alamagordo – the most highly classified secret of the war."

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

http://www.justifiedfilms.com/shooting-for-the-butler/

This is a trailer for a Dunsany documentary that should be out very soon.

Saturday I talked to some guy who had bought every Robert Sheckley book ever. Today when I went to lunch I saw a guy leaning on a loading dock, reading an old Del Rey paperback of Clifford Simak's Way Station. Don't want to get into tribbleshuggles, but it reminded me how much I enjoy our ilx sf threads.

I saw a guy leaning on a loading dock, reading an old Del Rey paperback of Clifford Simak's Way Station.

People who seem to have figured out how to live

Ha.

Das Energi described back in the day by Ed Ward "collection of fascist epigrams...a classic in its own way", but there are those who love it; see Amazon customer reviews, for inst (he wrote several philosophical, inspirational. motivational books). Philip Wylie I remember mainly for railing against Momism: mothers coddling, weakening their sons, when it was time to fight the Commies, like in Indochina. Might've written some good fiction, though, for all I know.
Ancillary Justice just won the Clarke Award; wondering about reading it, also based on brief review: http://www.sfx.co.uk/2013/09/27/ancillary-justice-by-ann-leckie-review/

clifford simak is one of those names that's always around but damned if know anything about him, what's his deal

"Pastoral sf." Some people might find it kinda folksy and kinda boring.

i love him. one of my faves. i like the humanism/pastoralism. mid-west sci-fi. i find it comforting, but, yeah, that can definitely mean boring to a lot of people. he was a great storyteller. and lots of fun ideas! he wasn't a dullard or anything. some people criticize his lack of scientific knowledge, but i don't really care about that. everyone should at least read City. certified classic and all that.

I haven't read City yet, but I can recommend Way Station.

Clute Notes on Cliff

Unless maybe that entry was written by two ilxors.

Paul Williams. I remember picking up "Right To Pass" as a boy and flipping through it. A lot of the pages offered only one sentence each, which didn't seem like value for money. As I remember the last pages went as follows: "Get it straight. [new page] Get it straight. [new page] Get it straight." One artifact of a culture I grew up in but wasn't independent enough to rebel against, though it certainly felt inadequate.

I have "Only Apparently Real" around somewhere. Never realized it was written by the same author.

i loved this book:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/RNGRNDTHSB1953.jpg

Another country collection.. It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction.
Kurodahan and Haikasoru do quite a few Japanese anthologies and there are some older ones from the 80s.

Centipede are doing some affordable (compared to most of their books) books in a series called Library Of Weird Fiction, right now with Poe, Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood and W H Hodgson; most of these books are 900 pages. Carl Jacobi is in their less affordable Masters Of The Weird Tale series, which seems to be the basis for Library Of Weird Fiction. So Jacobi (who I know very little about), Machen, Bierce, Kuttner, FB Long might all have cheaper massive collections soon. Karl Edward Wagner already got a cheaper double volume collection last year.

Did somebody say Kuttner?

http://www.centipedepress.com/masters/kuttnermwt.html
Yes, with any luck this will be made into a cheaper volume later on. 460 pages, so not quite as massive as the other ones.

What stories or books do you like by Robert Sheckley?

I've only read the story 'Specialist'.

Really liked Soma Blues, which I just read recently. Not really too sf, one of his Alternative Detective books, but one of his last, a good example of how he never lost his writing chops. "Zirn Left Unguarded...", which is Every Space Opera Ever Condensed To Three Pages, is sort of an official ILX classic, having been blessed by Sinkah and the Sluglords. Two other stories that are kind of canonical are "The Seventh Victim" and "The Prize of Peril." Really haven't read anything by him that didn't deliver on some level. Haven't yet read the novel that's supposed to be the best, The Journey of Joenes. Maybe you just read more of the public domain stuff or try to get that NYRB collection.

Or is it Dimension of Miracles? Haven't read that one either.

Hey looks like most of the novels became available as pretty cheap ebooks last month.

Including a left-field personal favorite, Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera.

There's an NYRB collection of Robert Sheckley?

Hooray!

http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/store-of-the-worlds/

Why the sudden interest, the pinefox? Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Now if only we could get Aimless on board.

1. I read his story 'Specialist' in a Golden Age anthology recently

2. I realized that Lethem had cited him at the start of the essay collection THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE - not mentioning his stories at all but actually referring to Sheckley's writing of prefaces. I liked the fact that Sheckley came up here and wanted to know more about him.

Cool. I thought you read about his influence on James Graham Ballard. Both of these gentlemen appear in the first photo here: http://www.jgballard.ca/deep_ends/jgb_rio_convention.html

How interesting!

There are a Baker's Dozen of his short stories that are presumably in the public domain and available on the web or as a free ebook, such as "One Man's Poison."

Looks like there was a tribute to him last month, sorry I overlooked it: http://www.sfscope.com/2014/04/dont-lesnerize-nyrsf-readings-series-presents-a-tribute-to-robert-sheckley/

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2960

Ask a Foolish Question
Bad Medicine
Beside Still Waters
Cost of Living
Death Wish
Diplomatic Immunity
Forever
Keep Your Shape
One Man's Poison
The Hour of Battle
The Leech
The Status Civilization
Warm
Warrior Race
Watchbird

Pohl on Sheckley:
http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2012/07/robert-sheckley/
Be sure to read comments.

Can't find thing where Ballard mentions Sheckley by name- maybe it was just a cover blurb. There is an incredible passage in Miracles of Life in which he describes going for flight training with the RCAF in Moose Jaw, Canada, where he saw Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction on the magazine rack, which he snapped up month after month, eventually deciding to be an sf writer. You can make this stuff up.

koogs otm. One of those, The Status Civilization, is a novel.

OK, I see: "a draught of Voltaire and tonic."

'Witty and ingenious...as refreshing as a squirt from a Soda Syphon, a draught of pure Voltaire and Tonic'

Not to be confused with Brian Aldiss, who compared him with "Voltaire-and-soda" : http://sheckley.tripod.com/aldiss.htm

Another Sheckley story, "Hunting Problem," can be read here: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0743498747/0743498747___4.htm

Sheckley had a wide and fanatical readership in the Soviet Union for some reason.

Options is probably the strongest test of Sheckley-appreciation. (I liked it once, don't know if I still would.)

Now that Sheckley revival is in full swing, let's see what we can do about William Tenn.

Malzberg interviewed on the Galaxy Project http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/10/interview_barry_n_malzberg_and_the_galaxy_project/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlcI-TdX1eA

Which is part of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7kAZvujBN0

Is that film a dvd or made for internet? Is the Malzberg list part of the actual film?

Anyone been reading the new online version of Moorcock's New Worlds?
http://www.newworlds.co.uk/

I finally read The Lord of the Rings--finally, that is, after putting it down in early high school--thee appointed tyme of maximum susceptibility--upon realizing that I was expected to go epically Questing with a hero who had furry toes. Apparently a lot of detractors don't get past the first forty pages, or the first sentence, about Bilbo's elevetny-first birthday, but the whole point is the pull from light to dark and back again, and the way they get mingled---leaders on all levels, incl. drafted patrol leader Frodo, are subject to temptation, corruption (in the sense of physical and psychic wounds, some of them permanent/recurring--plus of course effects on Middle-earth, "the circles of the world," as mentioned briefly, in an end in one of the Appendices of this 1990s one-vol edition: circles, like the Ring, which must have their own kind of end, limits, be something, some thing, however elusively so, 'til the reader can peer through them, as Tom Bombadil does, and see something beyond. He does it and laughs, it's all nonsense to him, seeing his unchanged turf, but he knows it's real enough to others, with real enough, inescapable consequences for all, even a victorious Quest/Anti-Quest means the Grail/Anti-Grail will both save the world and destroy it, in terms of sucking the magic out of it (no spoiler, Gandalf tells Frodo that right off, when he drafts him for the destruction of the precious, corrupting Ring, cos magic's gone as far as it can go; time for the cycles continue by secular means, and slow down the death spiral, anyway)
One limitation: we're told the significance of most things as they happen---which is better than being swamped by codes, as can happen with Gene Wolfe--but an enjoyable exception is being allowed to ponder the fate of Sauron. I think (aside from his own obsessive psycylcling through Ages) seeing though his stone has intensified his focus on the Ring---stones don't lie, but their views, the contexts they create/intensify, given the viewer's own anxieties, antagonisms, hopes and dreads, have a lasting and sometimes entrapping affect on several characters. So yeah, I disagree with those who claim Tolkien doesn't do psychology--and the effect of the stone is not so far from science fictional concerns (note also the networking of stones).
And when the ship sails, it sails, buddy. Not that it doesn't leave some real nice (and not-at-all nice) stuff behind. "There's a feeling I get/When I look the West." Eh, guess I better go listen to some more of those folk-death-or-doom-metal promos (in recent years, Wino's way ahead of the pack). Also, now I need to check out the ancient albums of Cirith Ungol. But book-wise, should I read more Tolkien, beyond The Hobbit?
PS: search "Tolkien" on The New Yorker site, get lots of good results, especially Auden, Gopnik, and Anthony Lane.

Also the stress of leadership on all levels is a big part of the fateful psychology.

Malzberg clip is indeed part of the Campbell doc, which has no distribution channel as of yet, from what I read on the YouTube posting.