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

Oh no I'm just outing myself. AMC was right there in the pocket for baby In Orbit circa 1988-1994 or so.

Tbh I think the Master Harper trilogy is really the masterwork there. It all goes a bit "BUT THEY'RE FROM EARTH DON'T U SEE" after a while, but Menolly's story of persecution, escape, and finding refuge and a purpose in life is some high-quality stuff.

AMC was a huge formative influence on my wife (which I've probably mentioned before), we have an extensive collection of her works, only some of which I've read myself

<3 <3 <3

I wrote to her once. It was pre-internet of course but the bio in the back of the book gave her address as "Dragon Hold, County Wicklow, Ireland" so I addressed it there and, wouldn't you know, it arrived? I think she wrote me back but I actually can't remember, which seems crazy? SOMEWHERE I think I have a reply from AMC.

haha my wife had the exact same experience

She must have had a whole secretary just for answering 14-year-old girls.

I'm sorry, I tried a few AMC short stories for the first time recently, and thought they were p terrible - the short story version of Ship Who Sang was def more tolerable then the first two dragon stories, which seemed interminable even at novella length. Obv she's not mentioned in the same breath as Le Guin or Butler or Russ because she just isn't in the same class as them - or Vance or Silverberg or Tiptree. Funnily enough, just re-read 'When It Changed' by Russ - now THAT's a science fiction short story!

I’ve only read the dragondrums etc trilogy and I remember liking it. Long time ago though.

That's the one I meant to reference! Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q587qIUFET0

Enjoyed a couple of her books as a teenager, but yeah, she's a dreadful writer.

her prose is on par with Delaney's early works imo

Jo went down in the hole to turn over the boysh and rennedox the kibblebops.

could've come from either pen

Tanith Lee - "Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur de Fur". Really good, it's been reprinted a bunch. A lot of her collections have overlap, I still don't know if this is normal for an author of her times, maybe to do with being published between America and UK, catering to what readers are likely to own? She still has another two collections to come out.

Tbh I think the Master Harper trilogy is really the masterwork there.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Tuesday, July 30, 2019 8:36 PM

Do you mean the Harper Hall trilogy? Masterharper Of Pern is a single book, not in that trilogy.

Can this be approached by a newbie? I was thinking of trying the initial omnibus someday but I'm not in a hurry, I've got hundreds of priority authors ahead of her.

Nice appreciation of Samuel Delaney on The NY Times book section today.

Cool - just finished Dhalgren as it happens. Will go look.

i seem to have used up my lifetime's allocation of free nyt articles.

Don't think I had seen the contents list before
https://www.blackgate.com/2019/07/28/new-treasures-the-big-book-of-classic-fantasy-edited-by-ann-and-jeff-vandermeer/

Do you mean the Harper Hall trilogy?

Yes.

https://www.tor.com/2019/07/31/celebrating-poul-anderson-with-five-favourite-works/

Found this quite interesting, comments too (had no idea Greg Bear was his step-son). Brain Wave sounds awesome.

Thought Bear was his son-in-law.

Brain Wave has a good reputation, but my copy is still sitting in the To Be Read One Day on the Dying Earth pile/pvmic

Same

Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler: not sure how this was shortlisted for the Nebula and Tiptree awards and reprinted as a Gollancz SF masterwork, it has only in the dying pages the thinnest of speculative hints as to the nature of the title character. Otherwise she's entirely human, albeit an unspeaking cipher, a macguffin for the picaresque action. I hate picaresques and this one is especially joyless, with boldly underlined themes of white man's inhumanity to women and non-white men.

Increasingly realizing how much over-excitement I get from researching and buying books (so much faster than I read them of course). Back issue comic shop hunting used to be a big thing for me, the stores have mostly died out and there's very little comics I'm enthusiastic about now; so second hand book hunting is like a huge whalloping return of those feelings, and a part of my brain keeps saying "goinandgetmorebooksatoxfam" constantly.
And when stop using the internet on Monday, it takes me a while to calm down after researching books.

starting in on David Lindsay's "Voyage to Arcturus". Book sounds nuts, in a proto-CS Lewis space trilogy way

xpost yeah I totally get that. now that comic book stores don’t carry back issues, and music stores don’t have racks of 1000s of used CDs anymore, charity shops and secondhand bookstores are one of the few remaining non-online places where I still get pleasure from not knowing what I’ll find

Also oxfam books are basically the best chain bookseller in the UK right now

Yes, amazing how often I'll find something I really really wanted, like that whole Gwyneth Jones trilogy! It's all the more exciting than comic shops because there's so much genuinely good stuff and most of my favorite comics are kind of bad in some way or other.

David Lindsay is another high priority I've never got around to. It's still a mystery to me why his last 3 novels have not been reprinted in decades, they're bastarding hard to find.

Yeah, I found a ridiculously pulpy copy of Shadow of the Torturer last week, it’s way nicer to read than the horrible modern paperback.

Isn’t there a link upthread to different covers for that?

reminds me i have a copy in the flat of "flight to lucifer: a gnostic fantasy" (harold bloom's hommage-sequel to "voyage to arcturus") to read one day

(i think i got hold of it when i was doing the radioshow with tracer)

Is this the horrible modern one?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51K7XOoQc7L.jpg

Not my favorite but it's not horrible by sf book cover standards.

Yeah. I know those masterworks are great for republishing but I find them a bit sterile and classy. I feel wrong if I’m not reading the mass market paperback size.

https://i1.wp.com/www.djabbic.co.uk/BookCovers/Images/BrucePennington/TheShadowOfTheTorturer_1982.jpg

I’ve got this one linked upthread. The extra pulp factor comes from Gene Wolfe’s name - instead it’s blood red and embossed so you can see your reflection in it

I've got the Severian Of The Guild omnibus (why didn't they just call it Book Of The New Sun?), the small painting on it isn't interesting and it seems misleading but I haven't read it yet.

Not sure why there has never been a complete Solar Cycle collection, you could maybe do it in 5 brick books. Seems like a handsomely produced series like this could be a hit but maybe publishers don't have much faith in people reading the whole series.

Been going down rabbit holes on the SF Encyclopedia. Turns out Jonathan Clements does most of the east Asian entries, but he has a crazy cv, including Japanese, Chinese, Scandinavian history, translation, voice acting, lots of 2000AD and Doctor Who stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Clements
https://schoolgirlmilkycrisis.com/2011/10/10/get-lost/
Don't worry the last link is totally work safe.

Did any of those wormholes lead you to the discovery of a pocket universe or did you find yourself with the confines of a
keep?

I hadn't but now I know from the latter entry, Ben Elton has an entry!

Looking up the Japanese cover art for New Sun, I found proper alt-right shithead blogs fantasizing about a euro-Japanese future.

Noticed this in my collection the other day

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1372743915l/2373939.jpg
https://66.media.tumblr.com/7db090aea9e29cbb683dabd2f44918e7/tumblr_mznp4qi5HQ1ssmm02o1_500.jpg

lol

on the whole tbh i prefer the "cover looks spacey or futuristic or handily evocative but has little or nothing to do with the contents" sf book cover aesthetic to the "i skimread this garbage and here is my somewhat inept lightning indication of some themes" school

(exception to this: maybe bruce pennington)

It was not uncommon for fantasy artists to shop their work around for anything they could get. I've seen some things that were book, comic and album covers.

This springs to mind
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?34280
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?28847
https://www.discogs.com/Sepultura-Beneath-The-Remains/master/57949

Another Whelan
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?33416
https://www.discogs.com/Cirith-Ungol-Frost-And-Fire/master/253625

I think some of Cirith Ungol's other album covers by Whelan were also originally book covers. I don't know if the band were doing Elric songs or what.
See also a ton of comic magazines in the vein of Warren and Metal Hurlant across the world, a ton of fantasy artists sold their stuff in lots of countries for all the different magazines (wouldn't be surprised if a lot of stuff was stolen). There is a painting of the Mexican movie Dracula of the late 50s that was swiped by numerous artists and I've seen that face on film posters, book covers and comics.

see i think this is good and i approve of it

(not the stolen bit, ppl shd be paid, but the multiple use)

also cirith ungol doing elric songs, everything is canon in everyone else's universe, thomas covenant also a tank engine etc

I think the usage should be somewhat appropriate. There's too many books with spaceships on the cover but nothing like that in contents.

The best thing about it is giving artists some freedom to pursue their own ideas, because they sometimes are treated as specialist handymen for whatever the editors want.
The Elric thing is kind of different though because I'm sure that image was done specifically for Elric.

Also see Giger.

any book is made better by a chris foss rocketship (that looks like like a stripy space potato)

Controversial opinion: I've never liked Foss. It's a big side of SF I've never really cared for and part of the reason it taken me longer to come around to science fiction.

Richard Powers is the only real SF specialist artist (though he did other things) that I love but with all those Japanese entries of the encyclopedia fresh in my mind, Noriyoshi Ōrai and Naoyuki Kato are good too, but with more reservations.

I don't like Foss at all. Powers is great obviously, but I also highly rate Charles Moll, Bob Pepper, Karel Thole, Michael Payne, Jack Gaughan, Mike Hinge god there's so many classics