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

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.

As might be expected, love that Moorcock calls him out on his fascism/racism

If only they could have gotten Delany to do the same.

Actually he did

Although I think in the full film Moorcock calls Campbell out on something else he was against- editing.

Lol

Thanks for the Sheckley info !!

Last night I finished reading THE SELECTED STORIES OF PHILIP K. DICK. 21 stories in 466 pages. I wonder how far this collection coves the crucial stories, and how many other really important ones I've still to read (he wrote 100 others).

*covers

Don't forget the other in-print Sheckley collection, The Masque of Mañana, which has the AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination Service stories, among many others.

Which I mentioned twice already on this thread, sorry, maybe third time is the charm.

I would have thought that Malzberg list video was like a bonus feature video than part of the main documentary.

I saw Delany quote some homophobic thing that Poul Anderson said. I think it was a homosexual SF writers panel put on youtube.

Just found out today that former Steeleye Span members Johnson and Knight did an album about Dunsany's King Of Elfland's Daughter.

I am curious about this new New Worlds e-zine but what is their relationship to Moorcock? He doesn't seem to be involved, did he just give them permission to use his name?

I assumed he was editing it. I'm not that familiar with SF, but on first glance it looked like it was all writers from the heyday of New Worlds, so I wondered if it was still supposed to be intended as boundary pushing. But looking at it again maybe it does have more New writers. Not to say that old writers can't be innovative.

http://stem-works.com/system/sw_heros/15/original/Deep%20Space.jpg?1334673772

I am curious about this new New Worlds e-zine but what is their relationship to Moorcock? He doesn't seem to be involved, did he just give them permission to use his name?

And, is there anything on it more recent than one year ago?

yeah it looks dead

Killed by the shade of John W. Campbell, Jr.

I was just led to this cool artist via Clute's Twitter link to his updated (death-dated) SFE bio:http://ow.ly/wMD4K He did a lot, incl. wine-fine pulp covers, original books, album covers; here's one of my faves so far (must read more Vance)

http://lh4.ggpht.com/-FIacwF8NBcw/TmVYOam5YiI/AAAAAAAALqg/rqZ8KyD9Yec/Gray%252520Prince_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800

http://patrickwoodroffe-world.com/

Check out his site. I've been familiar with him for some time, he is similar to Hannes Bok but I had no idea he was the guy who did a lot of the Greenslade art and Judas Priest - Sad Wings Of Destiny!

have always loved the shit out of that vance cover. That's the edition I have.

Holy crap he did Mythopoeikon! I used to stare at that book on the shelf when I was 8 or 9 and want it so goddamn bad, second only to Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials! My parents got me Barlowe's eventually but never Mythopoeikon and I kind of completely forgot about it until looking at that website!

Anyone else reading 'Authority'?

Not me. But that series seems to be popular around here.

Amazing paintings on Woodroffe's site: so far, I'm hung-up on thee triptychs. Here's another drugstore paperback cover mentioned in the SFE entry:
http://www.alice-dsl.net/aymar/Reviews/Reviews_Robert%20Heinlein/Robert%20A%20Heinlein_The%20Best%20of%20Robert%20Heinlein_SPHERE_Patrick%20Woodroffe.jpg

A little sedate by comparison, but still.

Always got the detail!

He shares some ornamental DNA with Jim Woodring, clearly. Look at some of his images of temples, and in that cover dow just posted, that polka dotted tentacle-root thingy is hella Jim.

Reading the second Jeff Vandermeer Southern reach book -- promising stuff

I love Platypus Of Doom. The novella titles are great: "The Platypus of Doom", "The Armadillo of Destruction", "The Aardvark of Despair", "The Clam of Catastrophe"

Bizarrely, about a year or two ago I couldn't even find complete Orion/Gollancz Masterworks lists, I found it shocking that the publishers didn't have an easy to find list; but now there are seemingly comprehensive lists...

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_sf_masterworks.asp
https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_fantasy_masterworks.asp

I wonder why there is so many times more SF Masterworks than Fantasy? The priorities of the company or the difficulty of finding enough fantasy books that people could agree on? It seems the fantasy series only resumed recently after years of no new titles.

A lot of these are way out of print.

Margery Allingham's Albert Campion sometimes got lured into the fantastic/sf; would like to check the pre-Internet ESP kiddie-hive of The Mind Readers, maybe others mentioned here:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/allingham_margery
Also, turns out Henry Kuttner def wrote some of the f/sf-ier of Leslie Charteris's Saint stories, (LC was upfront about his fiction factory), and may have written more:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/charteris_leslie

Was idly wondering last night - what is the earliest appearance in literature of the concept of time travel? Couldnt decide if things like A Christmas Carol qualify.

Just read Will McIntosh: Defenders -- humanity genetically engineers gigantic warrior drone creatures to help them win against an alien invasion, then has no idea what to do with all these intelligent, agressive monsters afterwards: things go to hell. Not bad, not great--would have enjoyed it more if McIntosh had written more about the things he obviously didn't give a shit about, ie the actual mechanics of making these things, as opposed only to their effects on the world, though I'm criticisng him for not doing something he expressly set out to not do

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_in_fiction
Looks like someone could have a hell of a reading project.

In Walter Map's 12th century De nugis curialium ("Courtiers' Trifles"), Map tells of the Briton King Herla, who is transported with his hunting party over two centuries into the future by the enchantment of a mysterious harlequin.

Golf in the Year 2000 (1892), by J. McCullough, tells the story of an Englishman who fell asleep in 1892 and awakened in the year 2000. The focus of the book is how the game of golf would have changed by then, but (...)

wow @ Talmud entry