ThReads Must Roll: the new, improved rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

yeah i don't really 'get' ringworld. probably wouldn't have finished it if i hadn't brought it with me to the middle of nowhere

Never liked that one myself, preferred some of his short stories.

i finished a couple Scalzi novels recently, The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire, the first two in a trilogy set to be finished later this year iirc. Very good, I thought. I guess it would depend on your tolerance for Scalzi's irreverence but it's a got a good cast of characters and could make for a decent TV series (it's been optioned, which usually means bupkis but you never know). Both are pretty swift reads.

xp re: Ringworld.

The rampant interspecies sex (rishathra) held my pre-adolescent attention in 1982. It served some contractual/potlatch function, but I was totally cool with that at age 11.

Niven was always more a big idea guy than a someone who could plot an epic. So my nearly 35-year-old recollection of the book is as very episodic, reliant upon whether one could identify with aging-yet-not Louis Wu, improbably lucky Teela, feline pre-Worf Speaker-of-Tongues, or coward mastermind Nessus (still remember them, I'm not all gone). If you didn't want to be Wu or Teela, or bone them, then it fell apart.

'ringworld' --- every generation gets the big dumb object book it deserves -- and this is the big dumb object of the first return to conservatism -- plus it could pander to post new wave sensibilities in that people had sex and there were swears --

I recently read that Niven used to be a Marxist and that he hadn't swung fully right by the time of Ringworld, cant really find much about that.

For a while I didn't think I had any interest in buying a Heinlein book but seeing peoples hugely differing reactions to his work (most people I follow are not right wing) fascinates me. Like similar enough readers having totally different views on his most famous works.
Some trans person said that a few of their trans friends believes Heinlein may not have been completely cis or might just have had a fetish, because they said that men transforming into women is a recurring thing in his work.
Recently listened to a Pat Cadigan interview and I really didn't expect her to revere both the man and his work.

ringworld' --- every generation gets the big dumb object book it deserves -- and this is the big dumb object of the first return to conservatism -- plus it could pander to post new wave sensibilities in that people had sex and there were swears --

Knew going in that Niven was part of the libertarian/conservative SF wing, but I couldn't especially read Ringworld as a right-wing tract (tbh, I was so bored I wasn't paying deep attention), tho' any 'big dumb object' can obv do almost any kind of metaphorical heavy lifting if you really really want it to. In Ringworld and Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama (another beloved hard SF favourite that did nothing for me) the big dumb object has been abandoned, its purpose unclear even at the end of the book - so in both cases, there's also the sense of past glories gone, vanished. I guess that could be considered a conservative version of history.

As to the New Wave influence, the book that Ringworld most reminded me of (other than Rama) was Samuel R Delany's Nova, which I adored when I read it fairly recently. Both Niven and Delany are doing a kind of Bester re-boot - slam bang incident and invention, smart slick writerly style (Delany more poetic, to good and bad effect), big cosmic canvas - except Niven gets bogged down in endless technical scientific detail, and his characters are cardboard, lacking any of Delany's florid, compelling self-involvement (or Bester's hep cat cheekiness). Needless to say, the treatment of the few female characters in Ringworld is close to grotesque.

Science Fiction always seems like a form that's constantly in dialogue with itself, so Ringworld definitely feels in part like Niven's manifesto for a modern hard SF, and sometimes (but only sometimes) it's smart and flip and fast enough to anticipate cyberpunk, while at the same time fighting against SF as an 'inner space', psychologically more complex literary form.

Good post, although I felt like Nova was a little bit overrated when I finally got to it a few years ago.

TY James - I guess Nova also has a mystical, metaphysical dimension (all that tarot stuff) that's absent in Ringworld, and that I'm a bit of a sucker for when done well.

Re: Heinlein - of the classic 'big three' of 20th-century SF - Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein - he seems to be easily the best writer as writer amongst them, tho admittedly it is not a hugely high bar set by the other two. Needless to say, his many flaws and kinks - the fascisty social and racial politics, the incesty leering - make him by far the most 'problematic', too.

I would say of those three Asimov is easily the worst writer. Heinlein was a good writer in that sense that he adapted some kind of clean, propulsive Dashiell Hammett style to sf, but it comes with all that baggage you mention which makes it difficult for many of us to (re)read. Clarke can be a bit of a snooze but he has a mystical side that intrigues, particularly evident in The City and the Stars.

I love incest fantasies so that's a recommendation for me.

Sure you posted that on the right thread?
I read Heinlein and Asimov mostly in childhood (1950s), their and my prime, thought of them as impressive idea guys then, although even then was put off by RAH's old-movie-style snappy patter. Did sense that it was part of his overall urgency, turning those stories out nonstop, and always dug the Future History, incl. New Dark Ages of backlash into hysteria and theocracy, also hushed-up probs of Progress, like space voyagers senile in their 20s (something for Elon Musk and his passengers to think about; the stresses are real, though still seldom mentioned). The high-strung Cold War consiousness could always go in different directions. Delany recalled reading Starship Troopers very early on, and despite the obviously ridiculous paranoid impulses, etc., the narrator just once mentioned in passing, in parenthesis maybe, that he was black---a unique and heartening moment of the era.
Glory Road was the one for me and my first girl friend: the narrator, a discontented young veteran of sprawly early 60s War in Southeast Asia, meets a mysterious beauty in a low-budget corner of the Med and they go a-roving with swords, sandals and not much else (except a sidekick, soon enough, whom I pictured as Uncle Fester. although he certainly worked harder), through some of the 20 Universes. Incl. encounters with hang-ups you didn't know you had, so dig yourself! This part's trickier than dealing with the dragons etc.
But eh Stranger in A Strange Land is where I got off the bus, seemed very tiresome.

Oh speaking of Scalzi, I liked the way his Lock In, first in an occasional series, built on Asimov's robot detective stories: the narrator is locked (deep) into his body, the results of an epidemic, but he and some other survivors can operate robots via neural implants----so, now we have cyborg detectives! And it's set in very near future DC, with plently of salty political elements. Light reading, not bad. Thought Asimov, though more discreet or innocuous, was at his best with the robots, though enjoyed The Foundation Trilogy (in early 60s), especially the Mule, because (no spoilers)

I know that the incest scenarios in Heinlein bother people for more reasons than that, there's supposed to be other screwed up things about the situations.
But still, peoples squicked out reactions to books is generally a recommendation for me because even if I have nothing in common with the sexual interests of the author, I still find it interesting and at best it can add a special depth, and at worst there's a psychoanalyst's speculative pleasure to it. Or sometimes I just want to see what is bothering people so much (I find that a lot of readers simply don't like reading about any kind of sex) or how the writer pulls off a odd sexual scenario in an otherwise regular genre book.
It only puts me off when it seems to come from a place of real aggression or self-loathing. I recently bought a Jodorowsky graphic novel and my interest was dampened considerably by what looks like a miserable racist/misogynist fantasy.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1038438107
This is a definite recommendation, even though I have low expectations for the quality, I just want to see how bad it gets, how does he even attempt to portray a positive relationship with a 5 year old girl???
And how does he execute this?
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/piers-anthony/sopaths.htm

unrelated, Rich Horton wrote some short reviews of Thomas Burnett Swann's work.
http://rrhorton.blogspot.com/2018/10/birthday-review-capsule-reviews-of.html

sometimes I just want to see what is bothering people so much (I find that a lot of readers simply don't like reading about any kind of sex) or how the writer pulls off a odd sexual scenario in an otherwise regular genre book.

You should check out Pennterra then, where incest is all but unavoidable when empathic aliens make everyone super horny. Sounds ridiculous but it's very well handled; the main theme is also an interesting twist on the usually corny subject of science vs. faith.

new(ish) alastair reynolds, Elysium Fields. the previous, stand-alone novel The Prefect (2007) has been renamed and is now part 1 of the Prefect Dreyfus series and EF is the second. loved The Prefect, but this one dragged a bit.

Artemis, the follow up to The Martian, also dragged a bit.

or maybe it's ME that's dragging a bit...

currently halfway through Lathe Of Heaven

Ledge - I'll note it on the wishlist, but a few reviewers don't think it was handled well.

As much as I hate to report film/tv stuff on this thread, it is certainly noteworthy: the Babadook director is doing a series on Tiptree, a mixture of biography and her stories.

! is this for the BBC or something

I don't think there's anywhere confirmed so it may not even be a confirmed project
https://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3543657/sundance-2019-jennifer-kent-confirms-shes-working-something-scary-guillermo-del-toro-exclusive/

Again on the subject of books that gross people out for a variety of reasons. I cant remember if I've linked this before but it's quite an amusing meme that even John Ringo was amused by and it became a t-shirt.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/OH_JOHN_RINGO_NO
https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html

I've seen it applied Andre Norton recently. Somebody included Mein Kampf on such a list and it's really funny to imagine someone saying "Oh Adolf Hitler no!"

I know we've dwelled on this book before but here's another review.
https://www.blackgate.com/2019/02/06/the-astounding-life-of-john-w-campbell/

Farah Mendlesohn is bringing out a book on Heinlein soon.

More on the Silverberg controversy. He defends himself, comments section people unimpressed and brings up his past assessment of Tiptree's writing being masculine before her gender was revealed (apparently Damon Knight made a fool of himself in this regard too).
http://file770.com/racism-and-sexism/comment-page-1/

And then there was Benford calling Jemisin "honey" when he claimed her books didn't get the science right, causing another shitstorm.

Funnily enough, in some current far right wing circles, The Futurians collective are treated like villains.

Trying to read the long prioritized stuff and I don't feel good about the idea of reviewing each book as I go along. I want to get a bigger picture of their body of work before I offer my assessments on a lot of it, but it's going to take a while, I hope to finish most of it this year before I move onto authors influenced by the big guys.

But something very clear is that Clark Ashton Smith's work really suffered from having to support his parents. It seems like he knew exactly what he wanted to do very early on but often had to compromise for the science fiction market and it really doesn't suit him. His orientalist quickies are even worse in some ways, even though that might seem like something he'd fare much better with. Sad to see the chronological collections start with three stories that represent him well, followed by so much compromise.
Sometimes even in the successes, I wish he'd gone just a bit further, but I've still to reach the most celebrated Zothique stories, which are generally considered his apotheosis.

Hodgson is often considered one of the less refined of the classic weird fictionists but I honestly find him generally much easier going even when he's not in his favored area.

In the intro to Rule Golden, his quintet of mostly good-to-excellent-to-amazing (occasionally wobbly) novellas, Damon Knight confirms what comes across in reading them: that he wrote against the Cold War techonfascist vanguard in science fiction and elsewhere. He made several such statements, which may be one reason some current far rightists hate him.

Probably but these far right people paint with a very broad brush, I could swear I've heard them call Knight and Merrill "sjws".

But I've seen Knight characterized as a bit of a jerk by other kinds of people.

Speaking of Tiptree's way, SF Encyclopedia provides a handy map, incl. how she fooled some (in an era or when science fiction was mostly a male preserve)
...She joined the CIA in 1952 but left in 1955 and attended college, acquiring a PhD in experimental psychology in 1967. In that year she began writing as James Tiptree, Jr, taking on the persona of an emotionally robust and engaging middle-aged man with Pentagon experience whose only oddity was that no one had ever met him. Signing herself "Tip" in her widespread correspondence, she had found a voice to speak in. But.... Maybe a deep parody of ex-military Heinlein and his ilk? To some extent? Living that on paper for a while.
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/tiptree_james_jr

Oops meant to include the line before the CIA, Sheldon joined the US Army in 1942, eventually going into Air Force intelligence and working for a time in the Pentagon, so there'sanother part of "Tip."

Reading M.P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud, billed as Edwardian apocalypse literature. Starts out pretty ho-hum - protagonist is tempted by Evil Jezebel to try to be first at the North Pole because some billionaire left a fortune to whoever managed it - but takes a turn into very bizarre weird fiction. The distrust between the party and the inexplicable natural phenomena - dead animals everywhere, diamonds lying around, a lingering smell of peach - made me think of the Southern Reach trilogy. The protagonist puts all this down to the arrival at the North Pole being another Eve-biting-the-apple moment for mankind, and the ensuing chaos is the wrath of God, but I'm putting this down to savage superstition in order to keep the vibe eerie.

I want to read more Shiel, although some have said (maybe up this same thread?) that The Purple Cloud is disappointing. Others liked it. Anyway, I liked this story---posted on the previous Rolling Speculative etc thread:
...and all over his face broods a universe of rainbows, dingy and fat, which from the fat vapours of the pitch bringing forth rainbows, not rainbows of heaven, but, so to say, fallen angels, grown gross and sluggish. But, years ere this, I think, I had seen the bulrushes: for, soon after the volcano came, in roaming over to the left shore of the cataract's sea---the whole left shore is flat and widespread, and hath no high walls like the right side---I walked upon a freshet of fresh warm water, and after following it upward, saw all around a marsh's swamp, and the bush of bulrushes. This is where the oysters be so crass, and they be pearl oysters, for all that soil be crass with nacreous matter of some sort, with barrok pearls, mother of pearl, and in most of the oysters which I opened pearls; with a lot of conch shells which have within them pink pearls, and there be also the black pearl, such as they have in Mexico and the West Indies, with the yellow and likewise the white, which last be shaped like the pear, and large, and his pallor hath a blank brightness, very priceless, and so to say, bridal.

― dow, Monday, January 14, 2013 10:34 AM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's from "The Dark Lot of One Saul," by M.P. Shiel. Had heard of him as a xenophobe, racist, anti-Semite and indeed, it seems that he was as smitten by the Yellow Peril as much as his Elizabethan castaway was the yellow pearl, to say the least. Also wanted to deport the Jews to Palestine, thus "making him a Zionist of sorts"--mots juste, Great Tales of Science Fiction eds. Silverberg & Greenberg! But in non-shit-talking stories like this, he earns the crack in his pot, a la xp David Lindsay. Other goodies in here so far from Twain, Kipling, Wells; compatible though creakier Poe and Verne. Currently reading "R.U.R."; quite a contrast so far with Shiel.

― dow, Monday, January 14, 2013 10:46 AM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This quote is is one of the tamer bits actually; hard to avoid spoilers.

― dow, Monday, January 14, 2013

There's a new Margaret St Clair best of coming out called Hole In The Moon. I seen a database listing dating it back to 2017 but amazon says it's coming in September this year. Ramsey Campbell is editing it. It's very welcome since the last collection is becoming pricy.

Very Best Of Caitlin R Kiernan is coming out next month.

Zagava are starting to do paperbacks now. So some very desirable titles will be much much more affordable.

Had heard of him as a xenophobe, racist, anti-Semite

Evidence of this in The Purple Cloud is him spending considerable time poring over the ethnic origins of corpses he finds. To be fair it's somewhat justified by the narrative - evidence of a mass exodus towards the North and West to escape the cloud of death - but still feels very much like the old guy in that episode of Community disparaging Britta as being of "dirty swedish peasant stock" or summat.

Didn't expect him to spend as much time being literally the Last Man On Earth, but I'm interested in seeing where it goes.

Just picked up the Victor LaValle-edited People's Future of the United Stated anthology, which I am very excited to spend some time exploring. I don't know LaValle's work, but a friend was singing his praises him recently (after seeing his name attached to the front cover blurb on Kiese Laymon's Long Division, which I was in the process of recommending to him), and he sounds like someone I'd enjoy reading.

Some people have considered Shiel the first black speculative fiction author, which makes his race stories more interesting. Utterly crazy guy.
https://bizarrevictoria.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/m-p-shiel/

Machen was friends with him and some think "The White People" and "Children Of The Pool" are about Shiels abuse of his daughter.

Farah Rose Smith - Anonyma

Starts out the story of a dancer and her abusive architect lover (both possess other talents) then goes into other worlds, including places that look as much inspired by extreme metal music imagery as they do the worlds of the Weird Tales circle of writers; and surreal flights into less familiar territory.

Regular expressions of emotional and physical pain that go way beyond the involvement of the architect. Much of the book is dense with fleeting successions of impressions and observations that are so ambiguous and vague that I often had trouble getting a foothold.

It only worked for me half the time, but I liked the best parts quite a lot (boats and hooks, spirit projections, the village chapter, the coffins/dance scene, and many lovely lines scattered across the book) and there's much to admire about the approaches taken. Overall I prefer Almanac Of Dust but the peaks in this book are so much higher.

I've been expanding and keeping a regular close eye on my wishlists lately. Kept Leigh Brackett's Sea Kings Of Mars (supposedly the best collection you can find of her) on my wishlist, not expecting it to ever go down in price, but it did and I pounced fast. It was something like 25 pounds.

Never thought I'd regularly be spending over 30 for a book, but here we are. There's a few things in the £50-150 range that I'm really hoping will go down, but if they never do, I might just have to make some crazy exceptions. Wish I could haggle with the dealers. I could send an email but I feel that would be just too cheeky.

Thanks for that link about Shiel. I'd read the novel but had no idea about him and his deranged life.

I was slightly hesitant to say Shiel was crazy because a lot of people from those times had crazy lives, the many other articles from that link are proof. But maybe Shiel was just a bit crazier than most writers.

Recently heard about a jewish writer called Oswald Levett who wrote a novel called Papilio Mariposa, about an ugly jewish man who gets his revenge on the world by turning into a butterfly with a beautiful face and eating people he doesn't like; Only german versions available unfortunately. The writer died in an extermination camp.

I feel slightly bad about it, because Shiel must have caused people a lot of pain, but that page made me laugh and amused me a great deal.

https://www.tor.com/2015/05/28/the-sff-book-covers-you-remember-most-vividly/
Nice feature that continues into the comments.

Just noticed 3 lengthy Moorcock interivews on youtube. On the Savoy channel he's interviewed by Colin Greenland in the 80s and Alan Moore in the 00s, then by Hari Kunzru from last year.

His impression of slapping Elric back to life was funny. He said Donald A Wollheim was a friend but a very flawed man (wish he had expanded on this), calling him "the last Stalinist in New York".

Very interesting is his claim that the british new wave really wasn't reacting very much at all to the golden age SF, that Aldiss was the only person who had read much American SF and that the real reaction was against the stagnation of modernist writing.

His aversion to the countryside has always irked me (and his silly claim in Wizardry & Wild Romance that there was nothing to worry about in the destruction of it) but I think maybe it's just a certain kind of countryside he doesn't like, because he loves Robert Holdstock's fantasies. There's a bunch of disagreements I have but sometimes he seems to contradict things he's previously said about stories.

Talks about his upcoming fantasy semi-autiobiography.

There’s a collected ebook of all six Herbert Dune books for a pound on Kindle right now

With an unfortunately repulsive cover

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51fUQwny0JL.jpg

I saw that. It claims to be 7xx pages long whereas an ebook of just the first trilogy claims to be 9xx pages long...

In other Amazon news, those two disch books I ordered at 4am one morning have disappeared in the post...

S. P. Somtow - Light On The Sound

I first heard of Somtow over a decade ago when people would mention his book Vampire Junction as being one of the best vampire stories or even one of the best horror novels. A few years later I found out Somtow is a successful composer of operas and symphonies and that he's written quite a few fantasies. In more recent years I saw the fuller extent of his fantasy and science fiction books (unfortunately since he used write under the name Somtow Sucharitkul, sometimes databases divide his work between two different author pages), got a better sense of what he's done in music, film and television.

Some of the reviews, titles and cover art for his books are intriguing, he's very likable in his public talks... I feel an obsession coming on. I start with Light On The Sound, first part of the Inquestor series (4 books in the series, a 5th book is promised and 2 supplemental booklets about the series came out recently). Theodore Sturgeon calls it "no less than the greatest magnitude of spectacle and color since Stapledon"!

It's a story of an empire that travels the universe destroying utopias and creating extremely manufactured existences for the people they exploit. Most of the story is divided between three characters, the majority of it set on one planet, with a few brief trips to a couple of other planets. The dwellings of the Inquestors tend to be extravagant but the other characters live in very bare, deprived places which are nonetheless quite technologically advanced.

There's an invented language (explained in an appendix in impressive detail); Somtow is especially fond of joining words without hyphenating them; the perceptions of people who cant see or hear is very cleverly described in many chapters. Then there's poems and folk songs.

I absolutely adored this, I haven't enjoyed a book this much in quite some time. It's pretty close to the kind of thing I'm hoping for when I'm delving into semi-forgotten fantasy/science fiction from the 70s-80s-90s. It has the kind of scale and beautiful spectacle I to look for in fantastical weird fiction but also has these wonderful big rousing moments of a type that weird fiction authors usually don't do. This isn't weird/horror fiction but Somtow definitely can do that when he wants to. I was beaming with morbid glee at a couple of the things Lady Ynyoldeh does.
One of the best things is getting a taste of amazing things we're unlikely to ever experience. I wish I could ride the gravity devices, Udara and the Overcosm.
I also like the way it explores the mentality of the Inquestors, their ideas ingrained over centuries that even heretics have trouble shedding.

Quibbles:
Characters too often survive and progress through incredible luck.
Why doesn't the girl recognize crying? What would have stopped her? And how did she learn to talk so fluently in such a short time?
It seems like too many instances of risks being taken for the sake of action. Why were the Inquestors so careless in going to the Dark Country? Their soldiers have so much power and they could have easily avoided this. Why was the inexperienced boy left with the sensor panel?

Some people have issues with the dialogue. It is a tad unnatural sounding at times but it's set in a very different time and place.

Some parts of the big plan near the end are ridiculous, initially this dampened my enthusiasm but there's promise that it isn't all it seems. This is probably a hook for the sequel.

One reviewer said it takes too much from Dune. I only know the Lynch film version. The brain whales are certainly similar and at one meeting with them, Dune is clearly referenced. Some of the villains are reminiscent of Dune villains but not that much. I thought there was a few other more muted references to other science fiction books. But I'd be surprised if that many of Somtow's other inventions have much in common with the Herbert books.

Cant wait to read all Somtow's other books. I might go to the Riverrun trilogy, Vampire Junction, Jasmine Nights or a collection before I read the next Inquestor book. All his books are available from his print-on-demand company.

A real buried treasure, should have a much bigger following.

Somtow Ted talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUMY4WQyGOs
Somtow talking about making the English language work for you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXJFuQCJUMg
http://thevampireproject.blogspot.com/2008/12/interview-with-sp-somtow.html

He recently released a book about his time ghost writing classical music for an American guy in the 70s.

Some other things about him: Barry Malzberg played violin on one of his pieces. Tim Powers, Edward Bryant and a few other sf authors appeared in a (notoriously bad) film directed by him. He written a poem for a Thai newspaper at age 11, Shirley MacLaine happened to be in the country, liked the poem and used it in one of her books.

I had heard from the director, who I didn’t know anything about, that he wanted to make it, and my agent said, “Yes, he’s reputable, so go on and have a talk.” I went along expecting a clichéd, cigar-chewing guy, I and I was going to cry all the way to the bank after he had signed the contract, you know. First of all the image was completely wrong. It was a lithesome young Frenchman, rather elegant and thoughtful. I finally came down to the classic cliché question, “Tell me, why do you really want to make a film of my book?” He said, “There was one phrase in it that told me I had to make it, and it’s when there’s this dying woman and you write that ‘she has the possibility of joy’.”

I tell you this is utterly true. That sentence was the most important thing in that book for me and he had picked those six words out as his reason for making it. You can’t get much luckier than that, can you?

https://www.blackgate.com/2019/03/11/concerned-by-moral-imperatives-an-interview-with-d-g-compton/

Getting just a bit off topic but I liked this bit about portrayals of Asian women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do31JulCT6E